THE
REPUBLIC OF PLATO
JOWETT
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
THE
REPUBLIC OF PLATO
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
WITH
INTRODUCTION, ANALYSIS
MARGINAL ANALYSIS, AND INDEX
BY
B. JOWETT, M.A.
MASTER OF BALL1OL COLLEGE
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN
THE THIRD EDITION
REVISED AND CORRECTED THROUGHOUT
Ojtfori
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCC LXXXVIII
[A!/ rights reserved}
TO MY FORMER PUPILS
IN BALLIOL COLLEGE
AND IN THE UNIVERSlfY OF OXFORD,
WHO DURING FORTY-SIX YEARS
HAVE BEEN THE BEST OF FRIENDS TO ME,
tHIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION
OF THEIR NEVER FAILING ATTACHMENT.
PREFACE.
IN publishing a third edition of the Republic of Plato
(originally included in my edition of Plato's works), I have
to acknowledge the assistance of several friends, especially
of my secretary, Mr. Matthew Knight, now residing for his
health at Davos, and of Mr. Frank Fletcher, Exhibitioner
of Balliol College. To their accuracy and scholarship I am
under great obligations. The excellent index, in which
are contained references to the other dialogues as well as
to the Republic, is entirely the work of Mr. Knight. I am
also considerably indebted to Mr. J. W. Mackail, Fellow
of Balliol College, who read over the whole book in the
previous edition, and noted several inaccuracies.
The additions and alterations both in the introduction
and in the text, affect at least a third of the work.
Having regard to the extent of these alterations, and to
the annoyance which is felt by the owner of a book at the
possession of it in an inferior form, and still more keenly
by the writer himself, who must always desire to be read as
he is at his best, I have thought that some persons might
like to exchange for the new edition the separate edition
of the Republic published in 1881, to which this present
volume is the successor. I have therefore arranged that
those who desire to make this exchange, on depositing a
perfect copy of the former separate edition with any agent
of the Clarendon Press, shall be entitled to receive the new
edition at half-price.
It is my hope to issue a revised edition of the remaining
Dialogues in the course of a year.
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
THE Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the Republic.
exception of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them.
There are nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in the
Philebus and in the Sophist ; the Politicus or Statesman is more
ideal ; the form and institutions of the State are more clearly
drawn out in the Laws ; as works of art, the Symposium and the
Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of
Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of
style ; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or con-
tains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and
not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a
deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more
dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt
made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics
with philosophy. The Republic is the centre around which the
other Dialogues may be grouped ; here philosophy reaches the
highest point (cp. especially in Books V, VI, VII) to which ancient
thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon
among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of
knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the
bare outline or form from the substance of truth ; and both of
them had to be content with an abstraction of science which was
not yet realized. He was the greatest metaphysical genius whom
the world has seen ; and in him, more than in any other ancient
thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained. The
sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied so many
instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses
of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the law of
contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction
between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between
means and ends, between causes and conditions ; also the division
of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements,
or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary — these
b
ii The greatness of Plato.
Republic, and other great forms of thought are all of them to be found in the
Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato. The greatest
of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy
are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and things,
has been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep. 454 A ;
Polit. 261 E; Cratyl. 435, 436 if.), although he has not always
avoided the confusion of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.
463 E). But he does not bind up truth in logical formulae, —
logic is still veiled in metaphysics ; and the science which he
imagines to ' contemplate all truth and all existence ' is very
unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to
have discovered (Soph. Elenchi, 33. 18).
Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part
of a still larger design which was to have included an ideal history
of Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The
fragment of the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction,
second only in importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of
Arthur ; and is said as a fact to have inspired some of the early
navigators of the sixteenth century. This mythical tale, of
which the subject was a history of the wars of the Athenians
against the island of Atlantis, is supposed to be founded upon
an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood
in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to the
poems of Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty
(cp. Tim. 25 C), intended to represent the conflict of Persia and
Hellas. We may judge from the noble commencement of the
Timaeus, from the fragment of the Critias itself, and from the third
book of the Laws, in what manner Plato would have treated
this high argument. We can only guess why the great design
was abandoned ; perhaps because Plato became sensible of some
incongruity in a fictitious history, or because he had lost his
interest in it, or because advancing years forbade the completion
of it ; and we may please ourselves with the fancy that had this
imaginary narrative ever been finished, we should have found
Plato himself sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic in-
dependence (cp. Laws, iii. 698 ff.), singing a hymn of triumph
over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of
Herodotus (v. 78) where he contemplates the growth of the
Athenian empire — 'How brave a thing is freedom of speech,
The greatness of Plato. in
which has made the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Republic.
Hellas in greatness !' or, more probably, attributing the victory to
the ancient good order of Athens and to the favour of Apollo and
Athene (cp. Introd. to Critias).
Again, Plato may be regarded as the 'captain' (dpxwos) or
leader of a goodly band of followers ; for in the Republic is to be
found the original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City
of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous
other imaginary States which are framed upon the same model.
The extent to which Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were
indebted to him in the Politics has been little recognised, and
the recognition is the more necessary because it is not made by
Aristotle himself. The two philosophers had more in common than
they were conscious of; and probably some elements of Plato
remain still undetected in Aristotle. In English philosophy too,
many affinities may be traced, not only in the works of the Cam-
bridge Platonists, but in great original writers like Berkeley or
Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a truth higher than
experience, of which the mind bears witness to herself, is a conviction
which in our own generation has been enthusiastically asserted, and
is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who at the
Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has had the
greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise
upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke,
Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants.
Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life ; like
Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge ;
in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology,
and at the Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments
of his words when ' repeated at second-hand ' (Symp. 215 D) have
in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected
in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in
philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest
conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity
of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes,
have been anticipated in a dream by him.
The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the
nature of which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blame-
iv The argument of the Republic.
Republic, less old man — then discussed on the basis of proverbial morality
by Socrates and Polemarchus — then caricatured by Thrasymachus
and partially explained by Socrates — reduced to an abstraction by
Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become invisible in the
individual reappears at length in the ideal State which is con-
structed by Socrates. The first care of the rulers is to be educa-
tion, of which an outline is drawn after the old Hellenic model,
providing only for an improved religion and morality, and more
simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry, and
greater harmony of the individual and the State. We are thus
led on to the conception of a higher State, in which ' no man calls
anything his own,' and in which there is neither 'marrying nor
giving in marriage,' and 'kings are philosophers' and 'philoso-
phers are kings ; ' and there is another and higher education, in-
tellectual as well as moral and religious, of science as well as of
art, and not of youth only but of the whole of life. Such a State
is hardly to be realized in this world and quickly degenerates.
To the perfect ideal succeeds the government of the soldier and
the lover of honour, this again declining into democracy, and de-
mocracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regular order having
not much resemblance to the actual facts. When ' the wheel has
come full circle' we do not begin again with a new period of
human life ; but we have passed from the best to the worst, and
there we end. The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of
poetry and philosophy which had been more lightly treated in
the earlier books of the Republic is now resumed and fought out
to a conclusion. Poetry is discovered to be an imitation thrice
removed from the truth, and Homer, as well as the dramatic
poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is sent into banish-
ment along with them. And the idea of the State is supplemented
by the revelation of a future life.
The division into books, like all similar divisions \ is probably
later than the age of Plato. The natural divisions are five in
number ;— (i) Book I and the first half of Book II down to p. 368,
which is introductory ; the first book containing a refutation of the
popular and sophistical notions of justice, and concluding, like
some of the earlier Dialogues, without arriving at any definite
result. To this is appended a restatement of the nature of justice
1 Cp. Sir G. C. Lewis in the Classical Museum, vol. ii. p. i.
The divisions. v
according to common opinion, and an answer is demanded to the Republic.
question — What is justice, stripped of appearances ? The second
division (2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole of
the third and fourth books, which are mainly occupied with the
construction of the first State and the first education. The third
division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in which
philosophy rather than justice is the subject of enquiry, and the
second State is constructed on principles of communism and ruled
by philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea of good takes
the place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth and
ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who
correspond to them are reviewed in succession ; and the nature of
pleasure and the principle of tyranny are further analysed in the
individual man. The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the
whole, in which the relations of philosophy to poetry are finally
determined, and the happiness of the citizens in this life, which has
now been assured, is crowned by the vision of another.
Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted ; the
first (Books I-IV) containing the description of a State framed
generally in accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and
morality, while in the second (Books V-X) the Hellenic State is
transformed into an ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all
other governments are the perversions. These two points of view
are really opposed, and the opposition is only veiled by the genius
of Plato. The Republic, like the Phaedrus (see Introduction to
Phaedrus), is an imperfect whole ; the higher light of philosophy
breaks through the regularity of the Hellenic temple, which at last
fades away into the heavens (592 B). Whether this imperfection of
structure arises from an enlargement of the plan ; or from the im-
perfect reconcilement in the writer's own mind of the struggling
elements of thought which are now first brought together by
him ; or, perhaps, from the composition of the work at different
times — are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad
and the Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have
a distinct answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode
of publication, and an author would have the less scruple in
altering or adding to a work which was known only to a few of
his friends. There is no absurdity in supposing that he may have
laid his labours aside for a time, or turned from one work to
vi The second title.
Republic, another ; and such interruptions would be more likely to occur
m tne case °f a long tnan °f a short writing. In all attempts to
determine the chronological order of the Platonic writings on
internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single Dialogue being
composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must be
admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the
Laws, more than shorter ones. But, on the other hand, the
seeming discrepancies of the Republic may only arise out of the
discordant elements which the philosopher has attempted to unite
in a single whole, perhaps without being himself able to recognise
the inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a judgment
of after ages which few great writers have ever been able to
anticipate for themselves. They do not perceive the want of
connexion in their own writings, or the gaps in their systems
which are visible enough to those who come after them. In the
beginnings of literature and philosophy, amid the first efforts of
thought and language, more inconsistencies occur than now, when
the paths of speculation are well worn and the meaning of words
precisely defined. For consistency, too, is the growth of time ;
and some of the greatest creations of the human mind have been
wanting in unity. Tried by this test, several of the Platonic
Dialogues, according to our modern ideas, appear to be defective,
but the deficiency is no proof that they were composed at different
times or by different hands. And the supposition that the Re-
public was written uninterruptedly and by a continuous effort is
in some degree confirmed by the numerous references from one
part of the work to another.
The second title, ' Concerning Justice,' is not the one by which
the Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity,
and, like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may
therefore be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others
have asked whether the definition of justice, which is the professed
aim, or the construction of the State is the principal argument of
the work. The answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two
faces of the same truth ; for justice is the order of the State, and
the State is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions
of human society. The one is the soul and the other is the body,
and the Greek ideal of the State, as of the individual, is a fair mind
in a fair body. In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of
Is there one argument or more ? vii
which justice is the idea. Or, described in Christian language, the Republic.
kingdom of God is within, and yet developes into a Church or ex- IN™°N.LC
ternal kingdom ; ' the house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens,' is reduced to the proportions of an earthly building. Or,
to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are- the warp and the
woof which run through the whole texture. And when the con-
stitution of the State is completed, the conception of justice is not
dismissed, but reappears under the same or different names
throughout the work, both as the inner law of the individual soul,
and finally as the principle of rewards and punishments in another
life. The virtues are based on justice, of which common honesty
in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is based on the
idea of good, which is the harmony of the world, and is reflected
both in the institutions of states and in motions of the heavenly
bodies (cp. Tim. 47). The Timaeus, which takes up the political
rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is chiefly occu-
pied with hypotheses concerning the outward world, yet contains
many indications that the same law is supposed to reign over the
State, over nature, and over man.
Too much, however, has been made of this question both in
ancient and modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which
all works, whether of nature or of art, are referred to design.
Now in ancient writings, and indeed in literature generally, there
remains often a large element which was not comprehended in the
original design. For the plan grows under the author's hand ;
new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing ; he has not
worked out the argument to the end before he begins. The reader
who seeks to find some one idea under which the whole may be
conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most general.
Thus Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary explanations
of the argument of the Republic, imagines himself to have found
the true argument ' in the representation of human life in a State
perfected by justice, and governed according to the idea of good.'
There may be some use in such general descriptions, but they can
hardly be said to express the design of the writer. The truth is,
that we may as well speak of many designs as of one ; nor need
anything be excluded from the plan of a great work to which the
mind is naturally led by the association of ideas, and which does
not interfere with the general purpose. What kind or degree of
viii The leading thoughts.
Republic, unity is to be sought after in a building, in the plastic arts, in
N™ON!UC" poetry, in prose, is a problem which has to be determined rela-
tively \p the subject-matter. To Plato himself, the enquiry ' what
was the intention of the writer,' or ' what was the principal argu-
ment of the Republic ' would have been hardly intelligible, and
therefore had better be at once dismissed (cp. the Introduction to
the Phaedrus, vol. i.).
Is not the Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which,
to Plato's own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of
the State ? Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or
* the day of the Lord,' or the suffering Servant or people of God, or
the ' Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings ' only convey,
to us at least, their great spiritual ideals, so through the Greek State
Plato reveals to us his own thoughts about divine perfection, which
is the idea of good — like the sun in the visible world ; — about human
perfection, which is justice — about education beginning in youth
and continuing in later years — about poets and sophists and tyrants
who are the false teachers and evil rulers of mankind — about * the
world ' which is the embodiment of them — about a kingdom which
exists nowhere upon earth but is laid up in heaven to be the
pattern and rule of human life. No such inspired creation is at
unity with itself, any more than the clouds of heaven when the sun
pierces through them. Every shade of light and dark, of truth, and
of fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable in a work of philo-
sophical imagination. It is not all on the same plane ; it easily
passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of
speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it, and
ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the probabilities
of history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic
whole ; they take possession of him and are too much for him.
We have no need therefore to discuss whether a State such as
Plato has conceived is practicable or not, or whether the outward
form or the inward life came first into the mind of the writer. For
the practicability of his ideas has nothing to do with their truth
(v. 472 D) ; and the highest thoughts to which he attains may be
truly said to bear the greatest ' marks of design '—justice more
than the external frame-work of the State, the idea of good more
than justice. The great science of dialectic or the organisation of
ideas has no real content ; but is only a type of the method or
The imaginary date. ix
spirit in which the higher knowledge is to be pursued by the Republic.
spectator of all time and all existence. It is in the fifth, sixth, and IN™°£UC'
seventh books that Plato reaches the * summit of speculation,' and
these, although they fail to satisfy the requirements of a modern
thinker, may therefore be regarded as the most important, as they
are also the most original, portions of the work.
It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which
has been raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which
the conversation was held (the year 411 B.C. which is proposed by
him will do as well as any other) ; for a writer of fiction, and
especially a writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of
chronology (cp. Rep. i. 336, Symp. 193 A, etc.), only aims at general
probability. Whether all the persons mentioned in the Republic
could ever have met at any one time is not a difficulty which
would have occurred to an Athenian reading the work forty years
later, or to Plato himself at the time of writing (any more than to
Shakespeare respecting one of his own dramas) ; and need not
greatly trouhjle us now. Yet this may be a question having no
answer * which is still worth asking,5 because the investigation shows
that we cannot argue historically from the dates in Plato ; it would be
useless therefore to waste time in inventing far-fetched reconcile-
ments of them in order to avoid chronological difficulties, such, for
example, as the conjecture of C. F. Hermann, that Glaucon and
Adeimantus are not the brothers but the uncles of Plato (cp. Apol.
34 A), or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato intentionally left ana-
chronisms indicating the dates at • which some of his Dialogues
were written.
The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Pole-
marchus, Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus.
Cephalus appears in the introduction only, Polemarchus drops at
the end of the first argument, and Thrasymachus is reduced to
silence at the close of the first book. The main discussion is
carried on by Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Among the
company are Lysias (the orator) and Euthydemus, the sons of
Cephalus and brothers of Polemarchus, an unknown Charmantides
— these are mute auditors ; also there is Cleitophon, who once
interrupts (340 A), where, as in the Dialogue which bears his
name, he appears as the friend and ally of Thrasymachus.
K The characters : Cephalus and Polemarchus :
Republic. Cephalus, the patriarch of the house, has been appropriately
IN™ON UC~ engaged in offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man
who has almost done with life, and is at peace with himself and
with all mankind. He feels that he is drawing nearer to the
world below, and seems to linger around the memory of the past.
He is eager that Socrates should come to visit him, fond of the
poetry of the last generation, happy in the consciousness of a
well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the tyranny of youth-
ful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his indifference
to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of character.
He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because their
whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he acknow-
ledges that riches have the advantage of placing men above the
temptation to dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention
shown to him by Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less
than the mission imposed upon him by the Oracle, leads him to
ask questions of all men, young and old alike (cp., i. 328 A), should
also be noted. Who better suited to raise the question of justice
than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of
it ? The moderation with which old age is pictured by Cephalus
as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic, not only
of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the
exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of
life is described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet
with the fewest possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad
Attic, iv. 16), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in
the discussion which follows, and which he could neither have
understood nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic
propriety (cp. Lysimachus in the Laches, 89).
His 'son and heir' Polemarchus has the frankness and im-
petuousness of youth ; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the
opening scene, and will not ' let him off' (v. 449 B) on the subject of
women and children. Like Cephalus, he is limited in his point of
view, and represents the proverbial stage of morality which has
rules of life rather than principles ; and he quotes Simonides (cp.
Aristoph. Clouds, 1355 ff.) as his father had quoted Pindar. But after
this he has no more to say; the answers which he makes are
only elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. He has not
yet experienced the influence of the Sophists like Glaucon and
Thrasymachus : xi
Adeimantus, nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting them ; he Republic.
belongs to the pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age. He is incapable
of arguing, and is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree that he
does not know what he is saying. He is made to admit that
justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the arts
(i. 333 E). From his brother Lysias (contra Eratosth. p. 121) we
learn that he fell a victim to the Thirty Tyrants, but no allusion is
here made to his fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and
his family were of Syracusan origin, and had migrated from
Thurii to Athens.
The ' Chalcedonian giant,' Thrasymachus, of whom we have
already heard in the Phaedrus (267 D), is the personification of
the Sophists, according to Plato's conception of them, in some of
their worst characteristics. He is vain and blustering, refusing to
discourse unless he is paid, fond of making an oration, and hoping
thereby to escape the inevitable Socrates; but a mere child in
argument, and unable to foresee that the next 'move' (to use a
Platonic expression) will ' shut him up ' (vi. 487 B). He has reached
the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in
advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of
defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his con-
fusion with banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are
attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by
any other Sophist is uncertain ; in the infancy of philosophy
serious errors about morality might easily grow up— they are
certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides ; but we
are concerned at present with Plato's description of him, and not
with the historical reality. The inequality of the contest adds
greatly to the humour of the scene. The pompous and empty
Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great master of
dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and
weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates,
but his noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more
open to the thrusts of his assailant. His determination to cram
down their throats, or put ' bodily into their souls ' his own words,
elicits a cry of horror from Socrates. The state of his temper
is quite as worthy of remark as the process of the argument.
Nothing is more amusing than his complete submission when he
has been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems to continue
xii Glaucon and Adeimantus.
Republic, the discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent good-will,
and he even testifies his interest at a later stage by one or two
occasional remarks (v. 450 A, B). When attacked by Glaucon
(vi. 498 C, D) he is humorously protected by Socrates * as one who
has never been his enemy and is now his friend.' From Cicero
and Quintilian and from Aristotle's Rhetoric (iii. i. 7 ; ii. 23. 29) we
learn that the Sophist whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a
man of note whose writings were preserved in later ages. The
play on his name which was made by his contemporary Herodicus
(Aris. Rhet. ii. 23, 29), ' thou wast ever bold in battle/ seems to
show that the description of him is not devoid of verisimilitude.
When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal re-
spondents, Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene : here,
as in Greek tragedy (cp. Introd. to Phaedo), three actors are in-
troduced. At first sight the two sons of Ariston may seem to
wear a family likeness, like the two friends Simmias and Cebes in
the Phaedo. But on a nearer examination of them the similarity
vanishes, and they are seen to be distinct characters. Glaucon is
the impetuous youth who can 'just never have enough of fechting'
(cp. the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii. 6) ; the man of pleasure
who is acquainted with the mysteries of love (v. 474 D) ; the
'juvenis qui gaudet canibus,' and who improves the breed of
animals (v. 459 A) ; the lover of art and music (iii. 398 D, E) who
has all the experiences of youthful life. He is full of quickness
and penetration, piercing easily below the clumsy platitudes of
Thrasymachus to the real difficulty; he turns out to the light the
seamy side of human life, and yet does not lose faith in the just
and true. It is Glaucon who seizes what may be termed the
ludicrous relation of the philosopher to the world, to whom a state
of simplicity is ' a city of pigs,' who is always prepared with a jest
(iii. 398 C, 407 A ; v. 450, 451, 468 C ; vi. 509 C ; ix. 586) when the
argument offers him an opportunity, and who is ever ready to
second the humour of Socrates and to appreciate the ridiculous,
whether in the connoisseurs of music (vii. 531 A), or in the lovers
of theatricals (v. 475 D), or in the fantastic behaviour of the citizens
of democracy (viii. 557 foil.). His weaknesses are several times
alluded to by Socrates (iii. 402 E ; v. 474 D, 475 E), who, however,
will not allow him to be attacked by his brother Adeimantus
(viii. 548 D, E). He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been
The difference between them. xiii
distinguished at the battle of Megara (368 A, anno 456 ?). . . The Republic.
character of Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder
objections are commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more
demonstrative, and generally opens the game ; Adeimantus pur-
sues the argument further. Glaucon has more of the liveliness
and quick sympathy of youth ; Adeimantus has the maturer judg-
ment of a grown-up man of the world. In the second book, when
Glaucon insists that justice and injustice shall be considered with-
out regard to their consequences, Adeimantus remarks that they
are regarded by mankind in general only for the sake of their
consequences ; and in a similar vein of reflection he urges at the
beginning of the fourth book that Socrates fails in making his
citizens happy, and is answered that happiness is not the first but
the second thing, not the direct aim but the indirect consequence
of the good government of a State. In the discussion about re-
ligion and mythology, Adeimantus is the respondent (iii. 376-398),
but at p. 398 C, Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest, and carries on
the conversation in a lighter tone about music and gymnastic to
the end of the book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers the
criticism of common sense on the Socratic method of argument
(vi. 487 B), and who refuses to let Socrates pass lightly over the ques-
tion of women and children (v. 449). It is Adeimantus who is the re-
spondent in the more argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and
more imaginative portions of the Dialogue. For example, through-
out the greater part of the sixth book, the causes of the corruption
of philosophy and the conception of the idea of good are discussed
with Adeimantus. At p. 506 C, Glaucon resumes his place of
principal respondent ; but he has a difficulty in apprehending the
higher education of Socrates, and makes some false hits in the
course of the discussion (526 D, 527 D). Once more Adeimantus
returns (viii. 548) with the allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he
compares to the contentious State ; in the next book (ix. 576) he is
again superseded, and Glaucon continues to the end (x. 621 B).
Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the succes-
sive stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of
the olden time, who is followed by the practical man of that day
regulating his life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the
wild generalization of the Sophists, and lastly come the young
disciples of the great teacher, who know the sophistical arguments
xiv The real and the Platonic Socrates.
Republic, but will not be convinced by them, and desire to go deeper into
~ the nature of things. These too, like Cephalus, Polemarchus,
Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one another.
Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato, is
a single character repeated.
The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly con-
sistent. In the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such
as he is depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest
Dialogues of Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking,
questioning, the old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the
mask of Silenus as well as to argue seriously. But in the sixth
book his enmity towards the Sophists abates ; he acknowledges
that they are the representatives rather than the corrupters of the
world (vi. 492 A). He also becomes more dogmatic and construc-
tive, passing beyond the range either of the political or the specu-
lative ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage (vi. 506 C) Plato
himself seems to intimate that the time had now come for Socrates,
who had passed his whole life in philosophy, to give his own
opinion and not to be always repeating the notions of other men.
There is no evidence that either the idea of good or the conception
of a perfect state were comprehended in the Socratic teaching,
though he certainly dwelt on the nature of the universal and of
final causes (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 4 ; Phaedo 97) ; and a deep thinker
like him, in his thirty or forty years of public teaching, could
hardly have failed to touch on the nature of family relations, for
which there is also some positive evidence in the Memorabilia
(Mem. i. 2, 51 foil.). The Socratic method is nominally retained ;
and every inference is either put into the mouth of the respondent
or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates.
But any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affec-
tation grows wearisome as the work advances. The method of
enquiry has passed into a method of teaching in which by the help
of interlocutors the same thesis is looked at from various points of
view. The nature of the process is truly characterized by Glaucon,
when he describes himself as a companion who is not good for
much in an investigation, but can see what he is shown (iv. 432 C),
and may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more fluently
than another (v. 474 A ; cp. 389 A).
Neither can we be absolutely certain that Socrates himself
Socrates. xv
taught the immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Republic.
Glaucon in the Republic (x. 608 D ; cp. vi. 498 D, E ; Apol. 40, 41) ; IN™O°£UC-
nor is there any reason to suppose that he used myths or reve-
lations of another world as a vehicle of instruction, or that he
would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek
mythology. His favourite oath is retained, and a slight mention is
made of the daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded to by
Socrates as a phenomenon peculiar to himself (vi. 496 C). A real
element of Socratic teaching, which is more prominent in the
Republic than in any of the other Dialogues of Plato, is the use of
example and illustration (ra $opriKa avrcS irpoo-fyepovTfs, iv. 442 E) :
* Let us apply the test of common instances.' ' You,' says Adei-
mantus, ironically, in the sixth book, 'are so unaccustomed to
speak in images.' And this use of examples or images, though
truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the
form of an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete
what has been already described, or is about to be described, in
the abstract. Thus the figure of the cave in Book VII is a re-
capitulation of the divisions of knowledge in Book VI. The
composite animal in Book IX is an allegory of the parts of the
soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true pilot in Book VI
are a figure of the relation of the people to the philosophers in the
State which has been described. Other figures, such as the dog
(ii. 375 A, D ; iii. 404 A, 416 A ; v. 451 D), or the marriage of the
portionless maiden (vi. 495, 496), or the drones and wasps in the
eighth and ninth books, also form links of connexion in long
passages, or are used to recall previous discussions.
Plato is most true to the character of his master when he
describes him as ' not of this world.' And with this representation
of him the ideal state and the other paradoxes of the Republic are
quite in accordance, though they cannot be shown to have been
speculations of Socrates. To him, as to other great teachers both
philosophical and religious, when they looked upward, the world
seemed to be the embodiment of error and evil. The common sense
of mankind has revolted against this view, or has only partially ad-
mitted it. And even in Socrates himself the sterner judgement
of the multitude at times passes into a sort of ironical pity or love.
Men in general are incapable of philosophy, and are therefore at
enmity with the philosopher ; but their misunderstanding of him
xvi Analysis 327.
Republic, is unavoidable (vi. 494 foil. ; ix. 589 D) : for they have never seen
lNr1oN.UC" mm as ne truly i§ m ms own image; they are only acquainted
with artificial systems possessing no native force of truth — words
which admit of many applications. Their leaders have nothing to
measure with, and are therefore ignorant of their own stature.
But they are to be pitied or laughed at, not to be quarrelled with ;
they mean well with their nostrums, if they could only learn that
they are cutting off a Hydra's head (iv. 426 D, E). This modera-
tion towards those who are in error is one of the most charac-
teristic features of Socrates in the Republic (vi. 499-502). In all
the different representations of Socrates, whether of Xenophon or
Plato, and amid the differences of the earlier or later Dialogues,
he always retains the character of the unwearied and disinterested
seeker after truth, without which he would have ceased to be
Socrates.
Leaving the characters we may now analyse the contents of the
Republic, and then proceed to consider (i) The .general aspects of
this Hellenic ideal of the State, (2) The modern lights in which the
thoughts of Plato may be read.
ANALYSIS. BOOK I. The Republic opens with a truly Greek scene— a
festival in honour of the goddess Bendis which is held in the
Piraeus ; to this is added the promise of an equestrian torch-race
in the evening. The whole work is supposed to be recited by
Socrates on the day after the festival to a small party, consisting of
Critias, Timaeus, Hermocrates, and another ; this we learn from
the first words of the Timaeus.
When the rhetorical advantage of reciting the Dialogue has been
gained, the attention is not distracted by any reference to the au-
dience ; nor is the reader further reminded of the extraordinary
length of the narrative. Of the numerous company, three only
take any serious part in the discussion; nor are we informed
whether in the evening they went to the torch-race, or talked, as
in the Symposium, through the night. The manner in which the
conversation has arisen is described as follows :- Socrates and his Steph.
companion Glaucon are about to leave the festival when they are 3*7
detained by a message from Polemarchus, who speedily appears
accompanied by Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and with
playful violence compels them to remain, promising them not only
Analysis 328-331. xvii
328 the torch-race, but the pleasure of conversation with the young, Republic
which to Socrates is a far greater attraction. They return to the
ANALYSIS.
house of Cephalus, Polemarchus' father, now in extreme old age,
who is found sitting upon a cushioned seat crowned for a sacrifice.
' You" should come to me oftener, Socrates, for I am too old to go
to you ; and at my time of life, having lost other pleasures, I care
the more for conversation.' Socrates asks him what he thinks of
329 age, to which the old man replies, that the sorrows and discontents
of age are to be attributed to the tempers of men, and that age is a
time of peace in which the tyranny of the passions is no longer
felt. Yes, replies Socrates, but the world will say, Cephalus, that
you are happy in old age because you are rich. 'And there is
something in what they say, Socrates, but not so much as they
330 imagine — as Themistocles replied to the Seriphian, " Neither you,
if you had been an Athenian, nor I, if I had been a Seriphian,
would ever have been famous," I might in like manner reply to
you, Neither a good poor man can be happy in age, nor yet a bad
rich man.' Socrates remarks that Cephalus appears not to care
about riches, a quality which he ascribes to his having inherited,
not acquired them, and would like to know what he considers to
be the chief advantage of them. Cephalus answers that when
you are old the belief in the world below grows upon you, and
331 then to have done justice and never to have been compelled to
do injustice through poverty, and never to have deceived any
one, are felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates, who is
evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the
meaning of the word justice ? To tell the truth and pay your
debts? No more than this? Or must we admit exceptions?
Ought I, for example, to put back into the hands of my friend,
who has gone mad, the sword which I borrowed of him when he
was in his right mind ? ' There must be exceptions.' ' And yet/
says Polemarchus, ' the definition which has been given has the
authority of Simonides.' Here Cephalus retires to look after the
sacrifices, and bequeaths, as Socrates facetiously remarks, the
possession of the argument to his heir, Polemarchus
The description of old age is finished, and Plato, as his manner INTRODUC-
is, has touched the key-note of the whole work in asking for the
definition of justice, first suggesting the question which Glaucon
afterwards pursues respecting external goods, and preparing for
c
xviii Analysis 332-335.
Republic the concluding mythus of the world below in the slight allusion of
Cephalus. The portrait of the just man is a natural frontispiece or
introduction to the long discourse which follows, and may perhaps
imply that in all our perplexity about the nature of justice, there
is no difficulty in discerning * who is a just man.' The first ex-
planation has been supported by a saying of Simonides ; and now
Socrates has a mind to show that the resolution of justice into two
unconnected precepts, which have no common principle, fails to
satisfy the demands of dialectic.
ANALYSIS. ..... He proceeds : What did Simonides mean by this saying of 332
his ? Did he mean that I was to give back arms to a madman ? * No,
not in that case, not if the parties are friends, and evil would result.
He meant that you were to do what was .proper, good to friends
and harm to enemies.' Every act does something to somebody ;
and following this analogy, Socrates asks, What is this due and
proper thing which justice does, and to whom ? He is answered
that justice does good to friends and harm to enemies. But in
what way good or harm ? ' In making alliances with the one, and
going to war with the other.' Then in time of peace what is the
good of justice ? The answer is that justice is of use in contracts, 333
and contracts are money partnerships. Yes ; but how in such
partnerships is the just man of more use than any other man ?
' When you want to have money safely kept and not used.' Then
justice will be useful when money is useless. And there is another
difficulty : justice, like the art of war or any other art, must be of
opposites, good at attack as well as at defence, at stealing as well 334
as at guarding. But then justice is a thief, though a hero notwith-
standing, like Autolycus, the Homeric hero, who was ' excellent
above all men in theft and perjury ' — to such a pass have you and
Homer and Simonides brought us ; though I do not forget that the
thieving must be for the good of friends and the harm of enemies.
And still there arises another question : Are friends to be in-
terpreted as real or seeming ; enemies as real or seeming ? And 335
are our friends to be only the good, and our enemies to be the
evil ? The answer is, that we must do good to our seeming and
real good friends, and evil to our seeming and real evil enemies —
good to the good, evil to the evil. But ought we to render evil for
evil at all, when to do so will only make men more evil ? Can
justice produce injustice any more than the art of horsemanship
The early stages of morality. xix
can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold ? The final con- Republic
I.
ANALYSIS.
elusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just return evil '
for evil ; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man, Peri-
336 ander, Perdiccas, or Ismenias the Theban (about B.C. 398-381)
Thus the first stage of aphoristic or unconscious morality is
shown to be inadequate to the wants of the age ; the authority
of the poets is set aside, and through the winding mazes of
dialectic we make an approach to the Christian precept of for-
giveness of injuries. Similar words are applied by the Persian
mystic poet to the Divine being when the questioning spirit is
stirred within him : — ' If because I do evil, Thou punishest me
by evil, what is the difference between Thee and me ? ' In this
both Plato and Kheyam rise above the level of many Christian (?)
theologians. The first definition of justice easily passes into the
second ; for the simple words 'to speak the truth and pay your debts1
is substituted the more abstract ' to do good to your friends and
harm to your enemies.' Either of these explanations gives a sufficient
rule of life for plain men, but they both fall short of the precision
of philosophy. We may note in passing the antiquity of casuistry,
which not only arises out of the conflict of established principles
in particular cases, but also out of the effort to attain them, and
is prior as well as posterior to our fundamental notions of
morality. The ' interrogation * of moral ideas ; the appeal to
the authority of Homer; the conclusion that the maxim, 'Do
good to your friends and harm to your enemies,' being erroneous,
could not have been the word of any great man (cp. ii. 380 A, B),
are all of them very characteristic of the Platonic Socrates.
. . . Here Thrasymachus, who has made several attempts to ANALYSIS.
interrupt, but has hitherto been kept in order by the company,
takes advantage of a pause and rushes into the arena, beginning,
like a savage animal, with a roar. < Socrates,' he says, ' what
folly is this? — Why do you agree to be vanquished by one
another in a pretended argument ? ' He then prohibits all the
337 ordinary definitions of justice ; to which Socrates replies that
he cannot tell how many twelve is, if he is forbidden to say
2 x 6, or 3 x 4, or 6 x 2, or 4 x 3. At first Thrasymachus is reluctant
338 to argue ; but at length, with a promise of payment on the part of
C 2
xx Analysis 338-343.
Republic the company and of praise from Socrates, he is induced to open
ANALYSIS the §ame- ' Listen,' he says ; * my answer is that might is right,
justice the interest of the stronger : now praise me.3 Let me
understand you first. Do you mean that because Polydamas the
wrestler, who is stronger than we are, finds the eating of beef
for his interest, the eating of beef is also for our interest, who
are not so strong ? Thrasymachus is indignant at the illustration,
and in pompous words, apparently intended to restore dignity to
the argument, he explains his meaning to be that the rulers make
laws for their own interests. But suppose, says Socrates, that the 339
ruler or stronger makes a mistake — then the interest of the
stronger is not his interest Thrasymachus is saved from this
speedy downfall by his disciple Cleitophon, who introduces the 340
word ' thinks ; '—not the actual interest of the ruler, but what he
thinks or what seems to be his interest, is justice. The contra-
diction is escaped by the unmeaning evasion : for though his real
and apparent interests may differ, what the ruler thinks to be his
interest will always remain what he thinks to be his interest.
Of course this was not the original assertion, nor is the new
interpretation accepted by Thrasymachus himself. But Socrates
is not disposed to quarrel about words, if, as he significantly
insinuates, his adversary has changed his mind. In what follows
Thrasymachus does in fact withdraw his admission that the ruler
may make a mistake, for he affirms that the ruler as a ruler is
infallible. Socrates is quite ready to accept the new position, 341
which he equally turns against Thrasymachus by the help of
the analogy of the arts. Every art or science has an interest, but 342
this interest is to be distinguished from the accidental interest
of the artist, and is only concerned with the good of the things or
persons which come under the art. And justice has an interest
which is the interest not of the ruler or judge, but of those
who come under his sway.
Thrasymachus is on the brink of the inevitable conclusion,
when he makes a bold diversion. 'Tell me, Socrates,' he says, 343
' have you a nurse ? ' What a question ! Why do you ask ?
' Because, if you have, she neglects you and lets you go about
drivelling, and has not even taught you to know the shepherd
from the' sheep. For you fancy that shepherds and rulers never
think of their own interest, but only of their sheep or subjects,
Analysis 343-347. xxi
whereas the truth is that they fatten them for their use, sheep and Republic
subjects alike. And experience proves that in every relation ANAL'
of life the just man is the loser and the unjust the gainer,
344 especially where injustice is on the grand scale, which is quite
another thing from the petty rogueries of swindlers and burglars
and robbers of temples. The language of men proves this — our
'gracious' and 'blessed3 tyrant and the like — all which tends to
show (i) that justice is the interest of the stronger ; and (2) that
injustice is more profitable and also stronger than justice.'
Thrasymachus, who is better at a speech than at a close
argument, having deluged the company with words, has a mind
345 to escape. But the others will not let him go, and Socrates adds
a humble but earnest request that he will not desert them at
such a crisis of their fate. ' And what can I do more for you ? '
he says ; ' would you have me put the words bodily into your
souls?' God forbid! replies Socrates; but we want you to
be consistent in the use of terms, and not to employ * physician '
in an exact sense, and then again ' shepherd ' or ' ruler ' in an
inexact, — if the words are strictly taken, the ruler and the
shepherd look only to the good of their people or flocks and
not to their own : whereas you insist that rulers are solely
actuated by love of office. ' No doubt about it,' replies Thrasy-
346 machus. Then why are they paid ? Is not the reason, that their
interest is not comprehended in their art, and is therefore the
concern of another art, the art of pay, which is common to the
arts in general, and therefore not identical with any one of them ?
347 Nor would any man be a ruler unless he were induced by the
hope of reward or the fear of punishment ; — the reward is money
or honour, the punishment is the necessity of being ruled by a
man worse than himself. And if a State [or Church] were com-
posed entirely of good men, they would be affected by the last
motive only; and there would be as much 'nolo episcopari' as
there is at present of the opposite. . . .
The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple INTRODUC-
and apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is
introduced. There is a similar irony in the argument that the
governors of mankind do not like being in office, and that there-
fore they demand pay.
Enough of this : the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far ANALYSIS.
xxii Analysis 348-352.
Republic more important — that the unjust life is more gainful than the just.
ANA YSIS N°w> as y°u an<* Ii Glaucon, are not convinced by him, we must 348
reply to him ; but if we try to compare their respective gains
we shall want a judge to decide for us ; we had better therefore
proceed by making mutual admissions of the truth to one another.
Thrasymachus had asserted that perfect injustice was more
gainful than perfect justice, and after a little hesitation he is
induced by Socrates to admit the still greater paradox that in- 349
justice is virtue and justice vice. Socrates praises his frankness,
and assumes the attitude of one whose only wish is to understand
the meaning of his opponents. At the same time he is weaving
a net in which Thrasymachus is finally enclosed. The admission
is elicited from him that the just man seeks to gain an advantage
over the unjust only, but not over the just, while the unjust
would gain an advantage over either. Socrates, in order to test
this statement, employs once more the favourite analogy of the
arts. The musician, doctor, skilled artist of any sort, does not 350
seek to gain more than the skilled, but only more than the
unskilled (that is to say, he works up to a rule, standard, law,
and does not exceed it), whereas the unskilled makes random
efforts at excess. Thus the skilled falls on the side of the good,
and the unskilled on the side of the evil, and the just is the skilled,
and the unjust is the unskilled.
There was great difficulty in bringing Thrasymachus to the
point ; the day was hot and he was streaming with perspiration,
and for the first time in his life he was seen to blush. But his
other thesis that injustice was stronger than justice has not yet
been refuted, and Socrates now proceeds to the consideration of
this, which, with the assistance of Thrasymachus, he hopes to
clear up ; the latter is at first churlish, but in the judicious hands
of Socrates is soon restored to good-humour : Is there not honour 35 1
among thieves ? Is not the strength of injustice only a remnant
of justice ? Is not absolute injustice absolute weakness also ?
A house that is divided against itself cannot stand ; two men who 35 *
quarrel detract from one another's strength, and he who is at
war with himself is -the enemy of himself and the gods. Not
wickedness therefore, but semi-wickedness flourishes in states, —
a remnant of good is needed in order to make union in action
possible, — there is no kingdom of evil in this world.
The three arguments respecting justice, xxiii
Another question has not been answered : Is the just or the Republic
353 unjust the happier ? To this we reply, that every art has an ANALySIS
end and an excellence or virtue by which the end is accomplished.
And is not the end of the soul happiness, and justice the ex-
cellence of the soul by which happiness is attained? Justice
354 and happiness being thus shown to be inseparable, the question
whether the just or the unjust is the happier has disappeared.
Thrasymachus replies : ' Let this be your entertainment,.
Socrates, at the festival of Bendis.' Yes ; and a very good
entertainment with which your kindness has supplied me, now
that you have left off scolding. And yet not a good entertainment
—but that was my own fault, for I tasted of too many things. First
of all the nature of justice was the subject of our enquiry, and
then whether justice is virtue and wisdom, or evil and folly ; and
then the comparative advantages of just and unjust : and the sum
of all is that I know not what justice is ; how then shall I know
whether the just is happy or not ? . . .
Thus the sophistical fabric has been demolished., chiefly by INTRODUC-
appealing to the analogy of the arts. 'Justice is like the arts
(i) in having no external interest, and (2) in not aiming at excess,
and (3) justice is to happiness what the implement of the work-
man is to his work.' At this the modern reader is apt to stumble,
because he forgets that Plato is writing in an age when the arts
and the virtues, like the moral and intellectual faculties, were still
undistinguished. Among early enquirers into the nature of
human action the arts helped to fill up the void of speculation ;
and at first the comparison of the arts and the virtues was not
perceived by them to be fallacious. They only saw the points of
agreement in them and not the points of difference. Virtue, like
art, must take means to an end ; good manners are both an art
and a virtue ; character is naturally described under the image
of a statue (ii. 361 D ; vii. 540 C) ; and there are many other figures
of speech which are readily transferred from art to morals. The
next generation cleared up these perplexities ; or at least supplied
after ages with a further analysis of them. The contemporaries
of Plato • were in a state of transition, and had not yet fully
realized the common-sense distinction of Aristotle, that 'virtue
is concerned with action, art with production ' (Nic. Eth. vi. 4),
or that 'virtue implies intention and constancy of purpose/
xxiv The just is of the nature of the finite.
Republic whereas ' art requires knowledge only ' (Nic. Eth. ii. 3). And yet
*' in the absurdities which follow from some uses of the analogy
INTRODUC-
TION, (cp. i. 333 E, 334 B), there seems to be an intimation conveyed that
virtue is more than art. This is implied in the reductio ad ab-
surdum that 'justice is a thief,' and in the dissatisfaction which
Socrates expresses at the final result.
The expression ' an art of pay ' (i. 346 B) which is described as
'common to all the arts' is not in accordance with the ordinary use
of language. Nor is it employed elsewhere either by Plato or by
any other Greek writer. It is suggested by the argument, and
seems to extend the conception of art to doing as well as making.
Another flaw or inaccuracy of language may be noted in the words
(i. 335 C) 'men who are injured are made more unjust.' For
those who are injured are not necessarily made worse, but only
harmed or ill-treated.
The second of the three arguments, 'that the just does not
aim at excess,' has a real meaning, though wrapped up in an
enigmatical form. That the good is of the nature of the finite
is a peculiarly Hellenic sentiment, which may be compared with
the language of those modern writers who speak of virtue as
fitness, and of freedom as obedience to law. The mathematical
or logical notion of limit easily passes into an ethical one, and
even finds a mythological expression in the conception of envy
(<j)66vos). Ideas of measure, equality, order, unity, proportion, still
linger in the writings of moralists ; and the true spirit of the fine
arts is better conveyed by such terms than by superlatives.
'When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness.'
(King John, Act iv. Sc. 2.)
The harmony of the soul and body (iii. 402 D), and of the parts of the
soul with one another (iv. 442 C), a harmony ' fairer than that of
musical notes,' is the true Hellenic mode of conceiving the per-
fection of human nature.
In what may be called the. epilogue of the discussion with
Thrasymachus, Plato argues that evil is not a principle of
strength, but of discord and dissolution, just touching the question
which has been often treated in modern times by theologians
and philosophers, of the negative nature of evil (cp. on the other
hand x. 610). In the last argument we trace the germ of the
Analysis 357-359. xxv
Aristotelian doctrine of an end and a virtue directed towards the Republic
end, which again is suggested by the arts. The final recon- INTRODUC
cilement of justice and happiness and the identity of the individual TION-
and the State are also intimated. Socrates reassumes the character
of a ' know-nothing ; ' at the same time he' appears to be not
wholly satisfied with the manner in which the argument has
been conducted. Nothing- is concluded ; but the tendency of the
dialectical process, here as always, is to enlarge our conception of
ideas, and to widen their application to human life.
Steph. BOOK II. Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon ANALYSIS.
35? insists on continuing the argument. He is not satisfied with the
indirect manner in which, at the end of the last book, Socrates
had disposed of the question 'Whether the just or the unjust
is the happier.' He begins by dividing goods into three classes :
— first, goods desirable in themselves ; secondly, goods desirable
in themselves and for their results; thirdly, goods desirable for
their results only. He then asks Socrates in which of the three
358 classes he would place justice. In the second class, replies
Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves and also for their
results. 'Then the world in general are of another mind, for
they say that justice belongs to the troublesome class of goods
which are desirable for their results only. Socrates answers that
this is the doctrine of Thrasymachus which he rejects. Glaucon
thinks that Thrasymachus was too ready to listen to the voice
of the charmer, and proposes to consider the nature of justice
and injustice in themselves and apart from the results and rewards
of them which the world is always dinning in his ears. He will
first of all speak of the nature and origin of justice ; secondly,
of the manner in which men view justice as a necessity and
not a good; and thirdly, he will prove the reasonableness of
this view.
* To do injustice is said to be a good ; to suffer injustice an evil.
As the evil is discovered by experience to be greater than the
359 g°°dj tne sufferers, who cannot also be doers, make a compact
that they will have neither, and this compact or mean is called
justice, but is really the impossibility of doing injustice. No one
would observe such a compact if he were not obliged. Let us
suppose that the just and unjust have two rings, like that of Gyges
xxvi Analysis 360-363.
Republic in the well-known story, which make them invisible, and then 360
' no difference will appear in them, for every one will do evil if
he can. And he who abstains will be regarded by the world
as a fool for his pains. Men may praise him in public out
of fear for themselves, but they will laugh at him in their hearts.
(Cp. Gorgias, 483 B.)
1 And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. Imagine
the unjust man to be master of his craft, seldom making mistakes
and easily correcting them ; having gifts of money, speech, 361
strength — the greatest villain bearing the highest character : and
at his side let us place the just in his nobleness and simplicity —
being, not seeming — without name or reward — clothed in his
justice only — the best of men who is thought to be the worst,
and let him die as he has lived. I might add (but I would rather
put the rest into the mouth of the panegyrists of injustice — they
will tell you) that the just man will be scourged, racked, bound,
will have his eyes put out, and will at last be crucified [literally
impaled} — and all this because he ought to have preferred seeming
to being. How different is the case of the unjust who clings 362
to appearance as the true reality ! His high character makes him
a ruler ; he can marry where he likes, trade where he likes, help
his friends and hurt his enemies ; having got rich by dishonesty
he can worship the gods better, and will therefore be more loved
by them than the just.'
I was thinking what to answer, when Adeimantus joined in the
already unequal fray. He considered that the most important
point of all had been omitted :— ' Men are taught to be just for
the sake of rewards ; parents and guardians make reputation the 363
incentive to virtue. And other advantages are promised by them
of a more solid kind, such as wealthy marriages and high offices.
There are the pictures in Homer and Hesiod of fat sheep and
heavy fleeces, rich corn-fields and trees toppling with fruit, which
the gods provide in this life for the just. And the Orphic poets
add a similar picture of another. The heroes of Musaeus and
Eumolpus lie on couches at a festival, with garlands on their
heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a paradise of immortal
drunkenness. Some go further, and speak of a fair posterity in the
third and fourth generation. But the wicked they bury in a slough
and make them carry water in a sieve : and in this life they
Analysis 364-366. xxvii
attribute to them the infamy which Glaucon was assuming to be Republic
the lot of the just who are supposed to be unjust. ANALYSIS
364 ' Take another kind of argument which is found both in poetry
and prose : — " Virtue," as Hesiod says, " is honourable but difficult,
vice is easy and profitable." You may often see the wicked in
great prosperity and the righteous afflicted by the will of heaven.
And mendicant prophets knock at rich men's doors, promising to
atone for the sins of themselves or their fathers in an easy fashion
with sacrifices and festive games, or with charms and invocations
to get rid of an enemy good or bad by divine help and at a small
charge ; — they appeal to books professing to be written by
Musaeus and Orpheus, and carry away the minds of whole
cities, and promise to " get souls out of purgatory ; " and if we
365 refuse to listen to them, no one knows what will happen to us.
'When a lively-minded ingenuous youth hears all this, what
will be his conclusion ? " Will he," in the language of Pindar,
" make justice his high tower, or fortify himself with crooked
deceit?" Justice, he reflects, without the appearance of justice,
is misery and ruin ; injustice has the promise of a glorious life.
Appearance is master of truth and lord of happiness. To appear-
ance then I will turn, — I will put on the show of virtue and trail
behind me the fox of Archilochus. I hear some one saying that
" wickedness is not easily concealed," to which I reply that " nothing
great is easy." Union and force and rhetoric will do much ; and
if men say that they cannot prevail over the gods, still how do
we know that there are gods ? Only from the poets, who acknow-
366 ledge that they may be appeased by sacrifices. Then why not
sin and pay for indulgences out of your sin ? For if the righteous
are only unpunished, still they have no further reward, while
the wicked may be unpunished and have the pleasure of sinning
too. But what of the world below? Nay, says the argument,
there are atoning powers who will set that matter right, as the
poets, who are the sons of the gods, tell us ; and this is confirmed
by the authority of the State.
' How can we resist such arguments in favour of injustice ? Add
good manners, and, as the wise tell us, we shall make the best of
both worlds. Who that is not a miserable caitiff will refrain from
smiling at the praises of justice ? Even if a man knows the better
part he will not be angry with others ; for he knows also that
T1ON.
xxviii False bases of morality.
Reptiblic more than human virtue is needed to save a man, and that he only
ANALYSIS Praises justice who is incapable of injustice.
'The origin of the evil is that all men from the beginning,
heroes, poets, instructors of youth, have always asserted " the
temporal dispensation," the honours and profits of justice. Had
we been taught in early youth the power of justice and injustice 367
inherent in the soul, and unseen by any human or divine eye, we
should not have needed others to be our guardians, but every one
would have been the guardian of himself. This is what I want
you to show, Socrates \ — other men use arguments which rather
tend to strengthen the position of Thrasymachus that " might is
right;" but from you I expect better things. And please, as
Glaucon said, to exclude reputation ; let the just be thought
unjust and the unjust just, and do you still prove to us the
superiority of justice.' . . .
INTRODUC- The thesis, which for the sake of argument has been maintained
by Glaucon, is the converse of that of Thrasymachus— not right is
the interest of the stronger, but right is the necessity of the
weaker. Starting from the same premises he carries the analysis
of society a step further back ; — might is still right, but the might
is the weakness of the many combined against the strength of the
few.
There have been theories in modern as well as in ancient times
which have a family likeness to the speculations of Glaucon ; e. g.
that power is the foundation of right ; or that a monarch has a
divine right to govern well or ill ; or that virtue is self-love or the
love of power ; or that war is the natural state of man ; or that
private vices are public benefits. All such theories have a kind of
plausibility from their partial agreement with experience. For
human nature oscillates between good and evil, and the motives of
actions and the origin of institutions may be explained to a certain
extent on either hypothesis according to the character or point of
view of a particular thinker. The obligation of maintaining
authority under all circumstances and sometimes by rather
questionable means is felt strongly and has become a sort of
instinct among civilized men. The divine right of kings, or more
generally of governments, is one of the forms under which this
natural feeling is expressed. Nor again is there any evil which
has not some accompaniment of good or pleasure ; nor any good
Justice and happiness. xxix
which is free from some alloy of evil ; nor any noble or generous Republic
thought which may not be attended by a shadow or the ghost of a INTROI)L.C
shadow of self-interest or of self-love. We know that all human TION-
actions are imperfect ; but we do not therefore attribute them to
the worse rather than to the better motive or principle. Such a
philosophy is both foolish and false, like that opinion of the clever
rogue who assumes all other men to be like himself (iii. 409 C).
And theories of this sort do not represent the real nature of the
State, which is based on a vague sense of right gradually cor-
rected and enlarged by custom and law (although capable also
of perversion), any more than they describe the origin of society,
which is to be sought in the family and in the social and religious
feelings of man. Nor do they represent the average character of
individuals, which cannot be explained simply on a theory of evil,
but has always a counteracting element of good. And as men
become better such theories appear more and more untruthful to
them, because they are more conscious of their own disinterested-
ness. A little experience may make a man a cynic ; a great deal
will bring him back to a truer and kindlier view of the mixed
nature of himself and his fellow men.
The two brothers ask Socrates to prove to them that the just is
happy when they have taken from him all that in which happiness
is ordinarily supposed to consist. Not that there is (i) any
absurdity in the attempt to frame a notion of justice apart from
circumstances. For the ideal must always be a paradox when
compared with the ordinary conditions of human life. Neither
the Stoical ideal nor the Christian ideal is true as a fact, but they
may serve as a basis of education, and may exercise an ennobling
influence. An ideal is none the worse because. ' some one has
made the discovery ' that no such ideal was ever realized. (Cp. v.
472 D.) And in a few exceptional individuals ' who are raised
above the ordinary level of humanity, the ideal of happiness may
be realized in death and misery. This may be the state which
the reason deliberately approves, and which the utilitarian as
well as every other moralist may be bound in certain cases to
prefer.
Nor again, (2) must we forget that Plato, though he agrees
generally with the view implied in the argument of the two
brothers, is not expressing his own final conclusion, but rather
xxx Justice and the appearance of justice.
Republic seeking to dramatize one of the aspects of ethical truth. He is
developing his idea gradually in a series of positions or situations.
He is exhibiting Socrates for the first time undergoing the
Socratic interrogation. Lastly, (3) the word ' happiness ' involves
some degree of confusion because associated in the language of
modern philosophy with conscious pleasure or satisfaction, which
was not equally present to his mind.
Glaucon has been drawing a picture of the misery of the just
and the happiness of the unjust, to which the misery of the tyrant
in Book IX is the answer and parallel. And still the unjust must
appear just ; that is * the homage which vice pays to virtue.' But
now Adeimantus, taking up the hint which had been already given
by Glaucon (ii. 358 C), proceeds to show that in the opinion of
mankind justice is regarded only for the sake of rewards and
reputation, and points out the advantage which is given to such
arguments as those of Thrasymachus and Glaucon by the conven-
tional morality of mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of
'justifying the ways of God to man.' Both the brothers touch
upon the question, whether the morality of actions is determined
by their consequences (cp. iv. 420 foil.) ; and both of them go
beyond the position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the class of
goods not desirable for themselves only, but desirable for them-
selves and for their results, to which he recalls them. In their
attempt to view justice as an internal principle, and in their
condemnation of the poets, they anticipate him. The common life
of Greece is not enough for them ; they must penetrate deeper into
the nature of things.
It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of
Glaucon and Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all
virtue. May we not more truly say that the old-fashioned notion
of justice is enlarged by Socrates, and becomes equivalent to
universal order or well-being, first in the State, and secondly
in the individual ? He has found a new answer to his old ques-
tion (Protag. 329), 'whether the virtues are one or many,' viz. that
one is the ordering principle of the three others. In seeking
to establish the purely internal nature of justice, he is met by
the fact that man is a social being, and he tries to harmonise
the two opposite theses as well as he can. There is no more
inconsistency in this than was inevitable in his age and country ;
Justice in the state. xxxi
there is no use in turning upon him the cross lights of modern Republic
philosophy, which, from some other point of view, would appear
equally inconsistent. Plato does not give the final solution of
philosophical questions for us ; nor can he be judged of by our
standard.
The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question
of the sons of Ariston. Three points are deserving of remark
in what immediately follows : — First, that the answer of Socrates
is altogether indirect. He does not say that happiness consists in
the contemplation of the idea of justice, and still less will he
be tempted to affirm the Stoical paradox that the just man can be
happy on the rack. But first he dwells on the difficulty of the
problem and insists on restoring man to his natural condition,
before he will answer the question at all. He too will frame
an ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract justice,
but the whole relations of man. Under the fanciful illustration of
the large letters he implies that he will only look for justice in
society, and that from the State he will proceed to the individual.
His answer in substance amounts to this,— that under favourable
conditions, i.e. in the perfect State, justice and happiness will
coincide, and that when justice has been once found, happiness
may be left to take care of itself. That he falls into some degree
of inconsistency, when in the tenth book (612 A) he claims to have
got rid of the rewards and honours of justice, may be admitted ;
for he has left those which exist in the perfect State. And
the philosopher ' who retires under the shelter of a wall ' (vi. 496)
can hardly have been esteemed happy by him, at least not in this
world. Still he maintains the true attitude of moral action.
Let a man do his duty first, without asking whether he will be
happy or not, and happiness will be the inseparable accident
which attends him. ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.'
Secondly, it may be remarked that Plato preserves the genuine
character of Greek thought in beginning with the State and
in going on to the individual. First ethics, then politics— this is
the order of ideas to us ; the reverse is the order of history. Only
after many struggles of thought does the individual assert his
right as a moral being. In early ages he is not one, but one
of many, the citizen of a State which is prior to him ; and he
xxx
Collective and individual action.
Republic
ANALYSIS.
has no notion of good or evil apart from the law of his country or
tne creed °f ms church. And to this type he is constantly tending
to revert, whenever the influence of custom, or of party spirit, or
the recollection of the past becomes too strong for him.
Thirdly, we may observe the confusion or identification of the
individual and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades
early Greek speculation, and even in modern times retains a
certain degree of influence. The subtle difference between the
collective and individual action of mankind seems to have escaped
early thinkers, and we too are sometimes in danger of for-
getting the conditions of united human action, whenever we either
elevate politics into ethics, or lower ethics to the standard of politics.
The good man and the good citizen only coincide in the perfect
State ; and this perfection cannot be attained by legislation acting
upon them from without, but, if at all, by education fashioning
them from within.
. . . Socrates praises the sons of Ariston, ' inspired offspring of 368
the renowned hero,' as the elegiac poet terms them ; but he does
not understand how they can argue so eloquently on behalf of
injustice while their character shows that they are uninfluenced
by their own arguments. He knows not how to answer them,
although he is afraid of deserting justice in the hour of need.
He therefore makes a condition, that having weak eyes he shall
be allowed to read the large letters first and then go on to
the smaller, that is, he must look for justice in the State first,
and will then proceed to the individual. Accordingly he begins 369
to construct the State.
Society arises out of the wants of man. His first want is food ;
his second a house ; his third a coat. The sense of these needs
and the possibility of satisfying them by exchange, draw in-
dividuals together on the same spot; and this is the beginning
of a State, which we take the liberty to invent, although neces-
sity is the real inventor. There must be first a husbandman,
secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to which may be added
a cobbler. Four or five citizens at least are required to make
a city. Now men have different natures, and one man will do one 370
thing better than many ; and business waits for no man. Hence
there must be a division of labour into different employments ; into
wholesale and retail trade ; into workers, and makers of workmen's
Analysis 370-375. xxxiii
tools ; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which includes all Republic
this will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be ANALySIS
371 very large. But then again imports will be required, and im-
ports necessitate exports, and this implies variety of produce in
order to attract the taste of purchasers; also merchants and
ships. In the city too we must have a market and money and
retail trades ; otherwise buyers and sellers will never meet, and
the valuable time of the producers will be wasted in vain efforts
at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be com-
plete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of
372 the citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear.
Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. They spend
their days in houses which they have built for themselves ; they
make their own clothes and produce their own corn and wine.
Their principal food is meal and flour, and they drink in
moderation. They live on the best of terms with each other, and
take care not to have too many children. ' But,' said Glaucon,
interposing, ' are they not to have a relish ? ' Certainly ; they
will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and fruits,
and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ' 'Tis a city of pigs, Socrates.'
Why, I replied, what do you want more ? ' Only the comforts of
life,— sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets.' I see ; you want
not only a State, but a luxurious State ; and possibly in the more
complex frame we may sooner find justice and injustice. Then
373 the fine arts must go to work— every conceivable instrument and
ornament of luxury will be wanted. There will be dancers,
painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks, barbers, tire-women, nurses,
artists ; swineherds and neatherds too for the animals, and
physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is the source. To
feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part of our
neighbours' land, and they will want a part of ours. And this
is the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes
374 as other political evils. Our city will now require the slight
addition of a camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier.
But then again our old doctrine of the division of labour must not
be forgotten. The art of war cannot be learned in a day, and
there must be a natural aptitude for military duties. There will
375 be some warlike natures who have this aptitude— dogs keen of
scent, swift of foot to pursue, and strong of limb to fight. And
d
xxxiv Analysis 375-379.
Republic as spirit is the foundation of courage, such natures, whether of
men or animals, will be full of spirit. But these spirited natures
ANALYSIS.
are apt to bite and devour one another ; the union of gentleness to
friends and fierceness against enemies appears to be an im-
possibility, and the guardian of a State requires both qualities.
Who then can be a guardian ? The image of the dog suggests
an answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. 376
Your dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing
or not knowing; and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is
the parent of gentleness. The human watchdogs must be philo-
sophers or lovers of learning which will make them gentle. And
how are they to be learned without education ?
But what shall their education be ? Is any better than the old-
fashioned sort which is comprehended under the name of music
and gymnastic ? Music includes literature, and literature is of two 377
kinds, true and false. 'What do you mean?' he said. I mean
that children hear stories before they learn gymnastics, and that
the stories are either untrue, or have at most one or two grains
of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early life is very im-
pressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have
to unlearn when they grow up ; we must therefore have a censor-
ship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some
of them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances
of Homer and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies ; stories
about Uranus and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, 378
and which should never be spoken of to young persons, or
indeed at all ; or, if at all, then in a mystery, after the sacrifice,
not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some unprocurable animal. Shall
our youth be encouraged to beat their fathers by the example
of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel by hearing or seeing
representations of strife among the gods? Shall they listen to
the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of Zeus
sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten ? Such
tales may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young
are incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what
tales are to be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and 379
not book-makers; we only lay down the principles according
to which books are to be written ; to write them is the duty of
others.
Analysis 379-383-
XXXV
And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he Republic
is ; not as the author of all things, but of good only. We will A
not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and
evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies ;— or that Athene
and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God
380 caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war ;
or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them.
Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just,
and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed
was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which
we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first
and great principle — God is the author of good only.
And the second principle is like unto it : — With God is no vari-
ableness or change of form. Reason teaches us this ; for if we
suppose a change in God, he must be changed either by another
or by himself. By another ? — but the best works of nature and
381 art and the noblest qualities of mind are least liable to be changed
by any external force. By himself? — but he cannot change for the
better ; he will hardly change for the worse. He remains for
ever fairest and best in his own image. Therefore we refuse to
listen to the poets who tell us of Here begging in the likeness of
a priestess or of other deities who prowl about at night in
strange disguises; all that blasphemous nonsense with which
mothers fool the manhood out of their children must be sup-
382 pressed. But some one will say that God, who is himself un-
changeable, may take a form in relation to us. Why should he ?
For gods as well as men hate the lie in the soul, or principle
of falsehood ; and as for any other form of lying which is used
for a purpose and is regarded as innocent in certain exceptional
cases — what need have the gods of this ? For they are not
ignorant of antiquity like the poets, nor are they afraid of their
383 enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs. God then is
true, he is absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not,
by day or night, by word or sign. This is our second great
principle— God is true. Away with the lying dream of Aga-
memnon in Homer, and the accusation of Thetis against Apollo
in Aeschylus. . . .
In order to give clearness to his conception of the State, Plato INTRODUC-
TION*
proceeds to trace the first principles of mutual need and of
da
xxxvi Political Economy in Plato.
Republic division of labour in an imaginary community of four or five
INTRODUC-
citizens. Gradually this community increases ; the division of
labour extends to countries ; imports necessitate exports ; a
medium of exchange is required, and retailers sit in the market-
place to save the time of the producers. These are the steps
by which Plato constructs the first or primitive State, introducing
the elements of political economy by the way. As he is going
to frame a second or civilized State, the simple naturally comes
before the complex. He indulges, like Rousseau, in a picture of
primitive life — an idea which has indeed often had a powerful in-
fluence on the imagination of mankind, but he does not seriously
mean to say that one is better than the other (cp. Politicus,
p. 272) ; nor can any inference be drawn from the description
of the first state taken apart from the second, such as Aristotle
appears to draw in the Politics, iv. 4, 12 (cp. again Politicus, 272).
We should not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than a
poem or a parable in too literal or matter-of-fact a style. On
the other hand, when we compare the lively fancy of Plato with
the dried-up abstractions of modern treatises on philosophy, we
are compelled to say with Protagoras, that the ' mythus is more
interesting ' (Protag. 320 D).
Several interesting remarks which in modern times would have
a place in a treatise on Political Economy are scattered up and
down the writings of Plato : cp. especially Laws, v. 740, Population ;
viii. 847, Free Trade ; xi. 916-7, Adulteration ; 923-4,. Wills and
Bequests ; 930, Begging ; Eryxias, (though not Plato's), Value and
Demand ; Republic, ii. 369 ff., Division of Labour. The last subject,
and also the origin of Retail Trade, is treated with admirable
lucidity in the second book of the Republic. But Plato never com-
bined his economic ideas into a system, and never seems to have
recognized that Trade is one of the great motive powers of the
State and of the world. He would make retail traders only of the
inferior sort of citizens (Rep. ii. 371 ; cp. Laws, viii. 847), though he
remarks, quaintly enough (Laws, ix. 918 D), that ' if only the best
men and the best women everywhere were compelled to keep
taverns for a time or to carry on retail trade, etc., then we should
know how pleasant and agreeable all these things are.'
The disappointment of Glaucon at the ' city of pigs,' the ludi-
crous description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined
Use of fiction. xxxvii
State, and the afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illus- Republic
tration of the nature of the guardian taken from the dog, the lNTROpUC
desirableness of offering some almost unprocurable victim when TION-
impure mysteries are to be celebrated, the behaviour of Zeus
to his father and of Hephaestus to his mother, are touches of
humour which have also a serious meaning. In speaking of
education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a child must
be trained in falsehood first and in truth afterwards. Yet this
is not very different from saying that children must be taught
through the medium of imagination as well as reason ; that their
minds can only develope gradually, and that there is much which
they must learn without understanding (cp. iii. 402 A). This is
also the substance of Plato's view, though he must be acknow-
ledged to have drawn the line somewhat differently from modern
ethical writers, respecting truth and falsehood. To us, economies
or accommodations would not be allowable unless they were
required by the human faculties or necessary for the communi-
cation of knowledge to the simple and ignorant. We should
insist that the word was inseparable from the intention, and that
we must not be ' falsely true,' i. e. speak or act falsely in support
of what was right or true. But Plato would limit the use of
fictions only by requiring that they should have a good moral
effect, and that such a dangerous weapon as falsehood should be
employed by the rulers alone and for great objects.
A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the
question whether his religion was an historical fact. He was
just beginning to be conscious that the past had a history; but
he could see nothing beyond Homer and Hesiod. Whether their
narratives were true or false did not seriously affect the political
or social life of Hellas. Men only began to suspect that they
were fictions when they recognised them to be immoral. And
so in all religions : the consideration of their morality comes first,
afterwards the truth of the documents in which they are re-
corded, or of the events natural or supernatural which are told
of them. But in modern times, and in Protestant countries per-
haps more than in Catholic, we have been too much inclined to
identify the historical with the moral ; and some have refused
to believe in religion at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was
discernible jn every part of the record. The facts of an ancient
xxxviii Myth and allegory.
Republic or religious history are amongst the most important of all facts ;
J but they are frequently uncertain, and we only learn the true
lesson which is to be gathered from them when we place our-
selves above them. These reflections tend to show that the
difference between Plato and ourselves, though not unimportant,
is not so great as might at first sight appear. For we should
agree with him in placing the moral before the historical truth
of religion ; and, generally, in disregarding those errors or mis-
statements of fact which necessarily occur in the early stages of
all religions. We know also that changes in the traditions of a
country cannot be made in a day ; and are therefore tolerant of
many things which science and criticism would condemn.
We note in passing that the allegorical interpretation of mytho-
logy, said to have been first introduced as early as the sixth
century before Christ by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well estab-
lished in the age of Plato, and here, as in the Phaedrus (229-30),
though for a different reason, was rejected by him. That ana-
chronisms whether of religion or law, when men have reached
another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by fictions is in
accordance with universal experience. Great is the art of inter-
pretation ; and by a natural process, which when once discovered
was always going on, what could not be altered was explained
away. And so without any palpable inconsistency there existed
side by side two forms of religion, the tradition inherited or
invented by the poets and the customary worship of the temple ;
on the other hand, there was the religion of the philosopher, who
was dwelling in the heaven of ideas, but did not therefore refuse
to offer a cock to ^Esculapius, or to be seen saying his prayers
at the rising of the sun. At length the antagonism between the
popular and philosophical religion, never so great among the
Greeks as in our own age, disappeared, and was only felt like the
difference between the religion of the educated and uneducated
among ourselves. The Zeus of Homer and Hesiod easily passed
into the * royal mind ' of Plato (Philebus, 28) ; the giant Heracles
became the knight-errant and benefactor of mankind. These and
still more wonderful transformations were readily effected by the
ingenuity of Stoics and neo-Platonists in the two or three centuries
before and after Christ. The Greek and Roman religions were
gradually permeated by the spirit of philosophy ; having lost their
The lie in the soul. xxxix
ancient meaning, they were resolved into poetry and morality ; Republic
and probably were never purer than at the time of their decay, J
when their influence over the world was waning. TI°N.
A singular conception which occurs towards the end of the
book is the lie in the soul ; this is connected with the Platonic •
and Socratic doctrine that involuntary ignorance is worse than
voluntary. The lie in the soul is a true lie, the corruption
of the highest truth, the deception of the highest part of the
soul, from which he who is deceived has no power of delivering
himself. For example, to represent God as false or immoral, or,
according to Plato, as deluding men with appearances or as the
author of evil ; or again, to affirm with Protagoras that ' know-
ledge is sensation,' or that ' being is becoming,' or with Thrasy-
machus ' that might is right,' would have been regarded by Plato
as a lie of this hateful sort. The greatest unconsciousness of the
greatest untruth, e. g. if, in the language of the Gospels (John iv.
41), * he who was blind ' were to say ' I see,' is another aspect of the
state of mind which Plato is describing. The lie in the soul may
be further compared with the sin against the Holy Ghost (Luke
xii. 10), allowing for the difference between Greek and Christian
modes of speaking. To this is opposed the lie in words, which
is only such a deception as may occur in a play or poem, or
allegory or figure of speech, or in any sort of accommodation, —
which though useless to the gods may be useful to men in certain
cases. Socrates is here answering the question which he had
himself raised (i. 331 C) about the propriety of deceiving a mad-
man ; and he is also contrasting the nature of God and man. For
God is Truth, but mankind can only be true by appearing some-
times to be partial, or false. Reserving for another place the
greater questions of religion or education, we may note further,
(i) the approval of the old traditional education of Greece ; (2) the
preparation which Plato is making for the attack on Homer and
the poets ; (3) the preparation which he is also making for the use
of economies in the State ; (4) the contemptuous and at the
same time euphemistic manner in which here as below (iii. 390)
he alludes to the Chronique Scandaleuse of the gods.
steph. BOOK III. There is another motive in purifying religion, ANALYSIS.
which is to banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is
xl Analysis 386-389.
Republic afraid of death, or who believes the tales which are repeated by
ANALYSIS the Poets concerning the world below. They must be gently
requested not to abuse hell; they may be reminded that their
stories are both untrue and discouraging. Nor must they be
angry if we expunge obnoxious passages, such as the depressing
words of Achilles — 'I would rather be a serving- man than rule
over all the dead ; ' and the verses which tell of the squalid
mansions, the senseless shadows, the flitting soul mourning over
lost strength and youth, the soul with a gibber going beneath the 387
earth like smoke, or the souls of the suitors which flutter about like
bats. The terrors and horrors of Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and
sapless shades, and the rest of their Tartarean nomenclature, must
vanish. Such tales may have their use ; but they are not the
proper food for soldiers. As little can we admit the sorrows and
sympathies of the Homeric heroes : — Achilles, the son of Thetis,
in tears, throwing ashes on his head, or pacing up and down the
sea -shore in distraction ; or Priam, the cousin of the gods, crying
aloud, rolling in the mire. A good man is not prostrated at the
Joss of children or fortune. Neither is death terrible to him ; and
therefore lamentations over the dead should not be practised by
men of note ; they should be the concern of inferior persons only, 388
whether women or men. Still worse is the attribution of such
weakness to the gods ; as when the goddesses say, ' Alas ! my
travail ! ' and worst of all, when the king of heaven himself
laments his inability to save Hector, or sorrows over the im-
pending doom of his dear Sarpedon. Such a character of God, if
not ridiculed by our young men, is likely to be imitated by them.
Nor should our citizens be given to excess of laughter — 'Such
violent delights ' are followed by a violent re-action. The descrip- 389
tion in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the clumsiness
of Hephaestus will not be ad.mitted by us. ' Certainly not.'
Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood,
as we were saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men
as a medicine. But this employment of falsehood must remain a
privilege of state ; the common man must not in return tell a lie to
the ruler; any more than the patient would tell a lie to his
physician, or the sailor to his captain.
In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance
consists in self-control and obedience to authority. That is a
Analysis 389-392. xli
lesson which Homer teaches in some places: 'The Achaeans Republic
marched on breathing prowess, in silent awe of their leaders ; ' —
ANALYSIS.
but a very different one in other places : ' O heavy with wine, who
390 hast the eyes of a dog, but the heart of a stag.' Language of the
A latter kind will not impress self-control on the minds of youth*
The same may be said about his praises of eating and drinking
and his dread of starvation ; also about the verses in which he tells
of the rapturous loves of Zeus and Here, or of how Hephaestus
once detained Ares and Aphrodite in a net on a similar occasion.
There is a nobler strain heard in the words : — ' Endure, my soul,
thou hast endured worse.' Nor must we allow our citizens to
receive bribes, or to say, ' Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend
kings ; ' or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles
that he should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted
them ; or the meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from
391 Agamemnon ; or his requiring a ransom for the body of Hector;
or his cursing of Apollo ; or his insolence to the river-god
Scamander ; or his dedication to the dead Patroclus of his own
hair which had been already dedicated to the other river-god
Spercheius ; or his cruelty in dragging the body of Hector round
the walls, and slaying the captives at the pyre : such a combina-
tion of meanness and cruelty in Cheiron's pupil is inconceivable.
The amatory exploits of Peirithous and Theseus are equally
unworthy. Either these so-called sons of gods were not the sons
of gods, or they were not such as the poets imagine them, any
more than the gods themselves are the authors of evil. The youth
who believes that such things are done by those who have the
392 blood of heaven flowing in their veins will be too ready to
imitate their example.
Enough of gods and heroes ; — what shall we say about men ?
What the poets and story-tellers say — that the wicked prosper
and the righteous are afflicted, or that justice is another's gain ?
Such misrepresentations cannot be allowed by us. But in this
we are anticipating the definition of justice, and had therefore
better defer the enquiry.
The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next
follows style. Now all poetry is a narrative of events past,
present, or to come ; and narrative is of three kinds, the simple,
the imitative, and a composition of the two. An instance will
xlii Analysis 393-398.
Republic make my meaning clear. The first scene in Homer is of the last 393
' or mixed kind, being partly description and partly dialogue. But
if you throw the dialogue into the ' oratio obliqua,' the passage
will run thus : The priest came and prayed Apollo that the 394
Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if Agamemnon
would only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks
assented, but Agamemnon was wroth, and so on — The whole then
becomes descriptive, and the poet is the only speaker left ; or, if
you omit the narrative, the whole becomes dialogue. These are
the three styles — which of them is to be admitted into our State ?
* Do you ask whether tragedy and comedy are to be admitted ? '
Yes, but also something more— Is it not doubtful whether our
guardians are to be imitators at all ? Or rather, has not the ques-
tion been already answered, for we have decided that one man
cannot in his life play many parts, any more than he can act both 395
tragedy and comedy, or be rhapsodist and actor at once ? Human
nature is coined into very small pieces, and as our guardians have
their own business already, which is the care of freedom, they will
have enough to do without imitating. If they imitate they should
imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for
the mask which the actor wears is apt to become his face.
We cannot allow men to play the parts of women, quarrelling,
weeping, scolding, or boasting against the gods,— least of all when
making love or in labour. They must not represent slaves, or
bullies, or cowards, or drunkards, or madmen, or blacksmiths, or 396
neighing horses, or bellowing bulls, or sounding rivers, or a
raging sea. A good or wise man will be willing to perform good
and wise actions, but he will be ashamed to play an inferior part
which he has never practised ; and he will prefer to employ the
descriptive style with as little imitation as possible. The man 397
who has no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and
anything ; sounds of nature and cries of animals alike ; his whole
performance will be imitation of gesture and voice. Now in the
descriptive style there are few changes, but in the dramatic there
are a great many. Poets and musicians use either, or a compound
of both, and this compound is very attractive to youth and their
teachers as well as to the vulgar. But our State in which one man
plays one part only is not adapted for complexity. And when 398
one of these polyphonous pantomimic gentlemen offers to exhibit
Analysis 398-401. xliii
himself and his poetry we will show him every observance of Republic
respect, but at the same time tell him that there is no room for his IH'
ANALYSIS.
kind in our State ; we prefer the rough, honest poet, and will not
depart from our original models (ii. 379 foil. ; cp. Laws, vii. 817).
Next as to the music. A song or ode has three parts, — the
subject, the harmony, and the rhythm ; of which the two last are
dependent upon the first. As we banished strains of lamentation,
so we may now banish the mixed Lydian harmonies, which are
the harmonies of lamentation ; and as our citizens are to be
temperate, we may also banish convivial harmonies, such as the
399 Ionian and pure Lydian. Two remain — the Dorian and Phrygian,
the first for war, the second for peace ; the one expressive of
courage, the other of obedience or instruction or religious feeling.
And as we reject varieties of harmony, we shall also reject the
many-stringed, variously-shaped instruments which give utterance
to them, and in particular the flute, which is more complex than
any of them. The lyre and the harp may be permitted in the
town, and the Pan's-pipe in the fields. Thus we have made a
purgation of music, and will now make a purgation of metres.
400 These should be like the harmonies, simple and suitable to the
occasion. There are four notes of the tetrachord, and there
are three ratios of metre, f, f , f, which have all their charac-
teristics, and the feet have different characteristics as well as the
rhythms. But about this you and I must ask Damon, the great
musician, who speaks, if I remember rightly, of a martial measure
as well as of dactylic, trochaic, and iambic rhythms, which he
arranges so as to equalize the syllables with one another, assigning
to each the proper quantity. We only venture to affirm the
general principle that the style is to conform to the subject and the
metre to the style ; and that the simplicity and harmony of the
soul should be reflected in them all. This principle of simplicity
has to be learnt by every one in the days of his youth, and may
401 be gathered anywhere, from the creative and constructive arts, as
well as from the forms of plants and animals.
Other artists as well as poets should be warned against mean-
ness or unseemliness. Sculpture and painting equally with music
must conform to the law of simplicity. He who violates it cannot
be allowed to work in our city, and to corrupt the taste of our
citizens. For our guardians must grow up, not amid images of
xliv Analysis 401-405.
Republic deformity which will gradually poison and corrupt their souls,
ANALYSIS ^ut m a ^anc* °^ nea^tn an<^ beauty where they will drink in from
every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of all these
influences the greatest is the education given by music, which
finds a way into the innermost soul and imparts to it the sense of 402
beauty and of deformity. At first the effect is unconscious ; but
when reason arrives, then he who has been thus trained welcomes
her as the friend whom he always knew. As in learning to read,
first we acquire the elements or letters separately, and afterwards
their combinations, and cannot recognize reflections of them until
we know the letters themselves ; — in like manner we must first
attain the elements or essential forms of the virtues, and then
trace their combinations in life and experience. There is a music
of the soul which answers to the harmony of the world ; and the
fairest object of a musical soul is the fair mind in the fair body.
Some defect in the latter may be excused, but not in the formen
True love is the daughter of temperance, and temperance is 403
utterly opposed to the madness of bodily pleasure. Enough has
been said of music, which makes a fair ending with love.
Next we pass on to gymnastics ; about which I would remark,
that the soul is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and
therefore if we educate the mind we may leave the education of
the body in her charge, and need only give a general outline
of the course to be pursued. In the first place the guardians must
abstain from strong drink, for they should be the last persons to
lose their wits. Whether the habits of the palaestra are suitable 404
to them is more doubtful, for the ordinary gymnastic is a sleepy
sort of thing, and if left off suddenly is apt to endanger health.
But our warrior athletes must be wide-awake dogs, and must
also be inured to all changes of food and climate. Hence they
will require a simpler kind of gymnastic, akin to their simple
music ; and for their diet a rule may be found in Homer, who
feeds his heroes on roast meat only, and gives them no fish
although they are living at the sea-side, nor boiled meats which
involve an apparatus of pots and pans ; and, if I am not mistaken,
he nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian cookery and Attic
confections and Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic
what Lydian and Ionian melodies are to music, must be forbidden.
Where gluttony and intemperance prevail the town quickly fills 405
Analysis 405-408. xlv
with doctors and pleaders ; and law and medicine give themselves Republic
airs as soon as the freemen of a State take an interest in them.
ANALYSIS.
But what can show a more disgraceful state of education than
to have to go abroad for justice because you have none of your
own at home ? And yet there is a worse stage of the same disease
— when men have learned to take a pleasure and pride in the twists
and turns of the law ; not considering how much better it would
be for them so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding
justice. And there is a like disgrace in employing a physician,
not for the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders, but because
a man has by laziness and luxury contracted diseases which were
unknown in the days of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric
practice of medicine. Eurypylus after he has been wounded
406 drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of a heating nature ;
and yet the sons of Asclepius blame neither the damsel who gives
him the drink, nor Patroclus who is attending on him. The truth
is that this modern system of nursing diseases was introduced
by Herodicus the trainer; who, being of a sickly constitution,
by a compound of training and medicine tortured first himself and
then a good many other people, and lived a great deal longer
than he had any right. But Asclepius would not practise this art,
because he knew that the citizens of a well-ordered State have
no leisure to be ill, and therefore he adopted the ' kill or cure '
method, which artisans and labourers employ. * They must be at
their business,' they say, ' and have no time for coddling : if they
407 recover, well ; if they don't, there is an end of them.' Whereas
the rich man is supposed to be a gentleman who can afford to be
ill. Do you know a maxim of Phocylides — that 'when a man
begins to be rich ' (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ' he should practise
virtue ' ? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent
with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice
of virtue which Phocylides inculcates ? When a student imagines
that philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything ;
he is always unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his
sons practised no such art. They were acting in the interest of
the public, and did not wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up
a puny offspring to wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly
408 cured ; and if a man was wounded, they applied the proper
remedies, and then let him eat and drink what he liked. But
xlvi Analysis 408-411.
Republic they declined to treat intemperate and worthless subjects, even
ANALYSIS.
7//* though they might have made large fortunes out of them. As to
the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a thunderbolt for
restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie — following our old rule we
must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he was not the
son of a god.
Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the
best judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest
experience of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction
between the two professions. The physician should have had
experience of disease in his own body, for he cures with his mind
and not with his body. But the judge controls mind by mind ; 409
and therefore his mind should not be corrupted by crime. Where
then is he to gain experience ? How is he to be wise and also
innocent ? When young a good man is apt to be deceived by
evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and
therefore the judge should be of a certain age; his youth
should have been innocent, and he should have acquired insight
into evil not by the practice of it, but by the observation of it in
others. This is the ideal of a judge ; the criminal turned detective
is wonderfully suspicious, but when in company with good men
who have experience, he is at fault, for he foolishly imagines
that every one is as bad as himself. Vice may be known of virtue,
but cannot know virtue. This is the sort of medicine and this the
sort of law which will prevail in our State ; they will be healing
arts to better natures ; but the evil body will be left to die by the 410
one, and the evil soul will be put to death by the other. And the
need of either will be greatly diminished by good music which
will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which will give
health to the body. Not that this division of music and gymnastic
really corresponds to soul and body ; for they are both equally
concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused
and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians
with their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has
too much gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or
philosophic temper which has too much music becomes enervated.
While a man is allowing music to pour like water through the 411
funnel of his ears, the edge of his soul gradually wears away, and
the passionate or spirited element is melted out of him. Too little
Analysis 411-414. xlvii
spirit is easily exhausted ; too much quickly passes into nervous Republic
irritability. So, again, the athlete by feeding and training has
ANALYSIS.
his courage doubled, but he soon grows stupid ; he is like a wild
beast, ready to do everything by blows and nothing by counsel
or policy. There are two principles in man, reason and passion,
412 and to these, not to the soul and body, the two arts of music
and gymnastic correspond. He who mingles them in harmonious
concord is the true musician, — he shall be the presiding genius of
our State.
The next question is, Who are to be our rulers? First, the
elder must rule the younger; and the best of the elders will
be the best guardians. Now they will be the best who love their
subjects most, and think that they have a common interest with
them in the welfare of the state. These we must select; but
they must be watched at every epoch of life to see whether
they have retained the same opinions and held out against force
413 and enchantment. For time and persuasion and the love of
pleasure may enchant a man into a change of purpose, and the
force of grief and pain may compel him. And therefore our
guardians must be men who have been tried by many tests,
like gold in the refiner's fire, and have been passed first through
danger, then through pleasure, and at every age have come
out of such trials victorious and without stain, in full command
of themselves and their principles ; having all their faculties
in harmonious exercise for their country's good. These shall
414 receive the highest honours both in life and death. (It would
perhaps be better to confine the term ' guardians' to this select
class : the younger men may be called ' auxiliaries.')
And now for one magnificent lie, in the belief of which, Oh that
we could train our rulers !— at any rate let us make the attempt
with the rest of the world. What I am going to tell is only a
another version of the legend of Cadmus ; but our unbelieving
generation will be slow to accept such a story. The tale must
be imparted, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, lastly to
the people. We will inform them that their youth was a dream,
and that during the time when they seemed to be undergoing
their education they were really being fashioned in the earth,
who sent them up when they were ready; and that they must
protect and cherish her -whose children they are, and regard
xlviii Analysis 414-417.
Republic each other as brothers and sisters. ' I do not wonder at your
ANALYSIS ^einS ashamed to propound such a fiction.' There is more
behind. These brothers and sisters have different natures, and 415
some of them God framed to rule, whom he fashioned of gold ;
others he made of silver, to be auxiliaries ; others again to be
husbandmen and craftsmen, and these were formed by him of
brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from a common stock,
a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden
son, and then there must be a change of rank ; the son of the
rich must descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social
scale ; for an oracle says ' that the State will come to an end if
governed by a man of brass or iron.' Will our citizens ever
believe all this ? ' Not in the present generation, but in the next,
perhaps, Yes.'
Now let the earthborn men go forth under the command of
their rulers, and look about and pitch their camp in a high place,
which will be safe against enemies from without, and likewise
against insurrections* from within. There let them sacrifice and
set up their tents; for soldiers they are to be and not shop- 416
keepers, the watchdogs and guardians of the sheep ; and luxury
and avarice will turn them into wolves and tyrants. Their habits
and their dwellings should correspond to their education. They
should have no property; their pay should only meet their
expenses; and they should have common meals. Gold and
silver we will tell them that they have from God, and this divine
gift in their souls they must not alloy with that earthly dross 417
which passes under the name of gold. They only of the citizens
may not touch it, or be under the same roof with it, or drink
from it ; it is the accursed thing. Should they ever acquire
houses or lands or money of their own, they will become house-
holders and tradesmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants
instead of helpers, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and
the rest of the State, will be at hand.
TION.
INTRODUC- The religious and ethical aspect of Plato's education will here-
after be considered under a separate head. Some lesser points
may be more conveniently noticed in this place.
i. The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with
grave irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a
Plato s employment of Homer. xlix
witness about ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and Republic
medicine ; attempting to distinguish the better lesson from the
worse (390), sometimes altering the text from design (388, and, TICK.
perhaps, 389) ; more than once quoting or alluding to Homer
inaccurately (391, 406), after the manner of the early logographers
turning the Iliad into prose (393), and delighting to draw far-
fetched inferences from his words, or to make ludicrous appli-
cations of them. He does not, like Heracleitus, get into a rage with
Homer and Archilochus (Heracl. Frag. 119, ed. Bywater), but uses
their words and expressions as vehicles of a higher truth ; not on
a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later
times the Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. And the conclusions
drawn from them are sound, although the premises are fictitious.
These fanciful appeals to Homer add a charm to Plato's style,
and at the same time they have the effect of a satire on the
follies of Homeric interpretation. To us (and probably to him-
self), although they take the form of arguments, they are really
figures of speech. They may be compared with modern citations
from Scripture, which have often a great rhetorical power even
when the original meaning of the words is entirely lost sight of.
The real, like the Platonic Socrates, as we gather from the Me-
morabilia of Xenophon, was fond of making similar adaptations
(i. 2, 58; ii. 6, n). Great in all ages and countries, in religion as
well as in law and literature, has been the art of interpretation.
2. 'The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the
style.' Notwithstanding the fascination which the word 'classical*
exercises over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is
observed in all the Greek poetry which has come down to us.
We cannot deny that the thought often exceeds the power of
lucid expression in ^Eschylus and Pindar ; or that rhetoric gets
the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet Euripides. Only
perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the two ;
in him alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a
Greek statue, in which there is nothing to add or to take away ;
at least this is true of single plays or of large portions of them.
The connection in the Tragic Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets
is not unfrequently a tangled thread which in an age before logic
the poet was unable to draw out. Many thoughts and feelings
mingled in his mind, and he had no power of disengaging or
e
1 Style and subject in Poetry.
Republic arranging them. For there is a subtle influence of logic which
re<luires to ke transferred from prose to poetry, just as the music
and perfection of language are infused by poetry into prose. In
all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own meaning
(Apol. 22 B) ; for he does not see that the word which is full of
associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that
of another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is
puzzling to others. There are many passages in some of our
greatest modern poets which are far too obscure ; in which there
is no proportion between style and subject; in which any half-
expressed figure, any harsh construction, any distorted collo-
cation of words, any remote sequence of ideas is admitted ; and
there is no voice ' coming sweetly from nature,' or music adding
the expression of feeling to thought. As if there could be poetry
without beauty, or beauty without ease and clearness. The
obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily out of the state
of language and logic which existed in their age. They are not
examples to be followed by us ; for the use of language ought
in every generation to become clearer and clearer. Like Shake-
spere, they were great in spite, not in consequence, of their
imperfections of expression. But there is no reason for returning
to the necessary obscurity which prevailed in the infancy of
literature. The English poets of the last century were certainly
not obscure ; and we have no excuse for losing what they had
gained, or for going back to the earlier or transitional age which
preceded them. The thought of our own times has not out-
stripped language ; a want of Plato's ' art of measuring ' is the
real cause of the disproportion between them.
3. In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made
to a theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may
be summed up as follows :— True art is not fanciful and imitative,
but simple and ideal,— the expression of the highest moral
energy, whether in action or repose. To live among works of
plastic art which are of this noble and simple character, or to
listen to such strains, is the best of influences, — the true Greek
atmosphere, in which youth should be brought up. That is the
way to create in them a natural good taste, which will have a
feeling of truth and beauty in all things. For though the poets
are to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of
Plato s theory of Art. li
reason — like love in the Symposium, extending over the same Republic
sphere, but confined to the preliminary education, and acting IN^'UC
through the power of habit (vii. 522 A) ; and this conception of tl°*!-
art is not limited to strains of music or the forms of plastic art,
but pervades all nature and has a wide kindred in the world. The
Republic of Plato, like the Athens of Pericles, has an artistic as
well as a political side.
There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts ; only
in two or three passages does he even allude to them (cp.
Rep. iv. 420; Soph. 236 A). He is not lost in rapture at the
great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the Propylea, the
statues of Zeus or Athene. He would probably have regarded
any abstract truth of number or figure (529 E) as higher than
the greatest of them. Yet it is hard to suppose that some in-
fluence, such as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into
his own mind from the works of art which he saw around him.
We are living upon the fragments of them, and find in a few
broken stones the standard of truth and beauty. But in Plato
this feeling has no expression ; he nowhere says that beauty is
the object of art ; he seems to deny that wisdom can take an
external form (Phaedrus, 250 E) ; he does not distinguish the
fine from the mechanical arts. Whether or no, like sortie writers,
he felt more than he expressed, it is at any rate remarkable
that the greatest perfection of the fine arts should coincide
with an almost entire silence about them. In one very striking
passage (iv. 420) he tells us that a work of art, like the State, is
a whole ; and this conception of a whole and the love of the
newly-born mathematical sciences may be regarded, if not as
the inspiring, at any rate as the regulating principles of Greek
art (cp. Xen. Mem. iii. 10. 6 ; and Sophist, 235, 236).
4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician
had better not be in robust health ; and should have known what
illness is in his own person. But the judge ought to have had no
similar experience of evil ; he is to be a good man who, having
passed his youth in innocence^ became acquainted late in life
with the vices of others. And therefore, according to Plato, a
judge should not be young, just as a young man according to
Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy. The
bad, on the other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no know-
e 2
Hi The transposition of ranks.
Republic ledge of virtue. It may be doubted, however, whether this train
In- of reflection is well founded. In a remarkable passage of the
INTRODUC-
TION. Laws (xii. 950 B) it is acknowledged that the evil may form a
correct estimate of the good. The union of gentleness and
courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet was
afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have
found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the
abhorrence of it (cp. infra, ix. 582). There is a directness of aim
in virtue which gives an insight into vice. And the knowledge
of character is in some degree a natural sense independent of
any special experience of good or evil.
5. One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because
un-Greek and also very different from anything which existed
at all in his age of the wojld, is the transposition of ranks. In the
Spartan state there had been enfranchisement qf Helots and
degradation of citizens under special circumstances. And in the
ancient Greek aristocracies, merit was certainly recognized as one
of the elements on which government was based. The founders
of states were supposed to be their benefactors, who were raised
by their great actions above the ordinary level of humanity ; at
a later period, the services of warriors and legislators were held to
entitle them and their descendants to the privileges of citizenship
and to the first rank in the state. And although the existence
of an ideal aristocracy is slenderly proven from the remains of
early Greek history, and we have a difficulty in ascribing such
a character, however the idea may be defined, to any actual
Hellenic state — or indeed to any state which has ever existed
in the world — still the rule of the best was certainly the aspira-
tion of philosophers, who probably accommodated a good deal
their views of primitive history to their own notions of good
government. Plato further insists on applying to the guardians
of his state a series of tests by which all those who fell short
of a fixed standard were either removed from the governing
body, or not admitted to it ; and this ' academic ' discipline did
to a certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta.
He also indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a
great part of the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the
modern European world, should be set aside from time to time in
favour of merit. He is aware how deeply the greater part of
The power of music. liii
mankind resent any interference with the order of society, and Republic
therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form of what he ,
INTRODUC-
himself calls a * monstrous fiction.' (Compare the ceremony of TION-
preparation for the two ' great waves ' in Book v.) Two principles
are indicated by him : first, that there is a distinction of ranks
dependent on circumstances prior to the individual : second, that
this distinction is and ought to be broken through by personal
qualities. He adapts mythology like the Homeric poems to the
wants of the state, making 'the Phoenician tale' the vehicle
of his ideas. Every Greek state had a myth respecting its own
origin ; the Platonic republic may also have a tale of earthborn
men. The gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is told,
and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification
of the ' monstrous falsehood.' Ancient poetry had spoken of a
gold and silver and brass and iron age succeeding one another,
but Plato supposes these differences in the natures of men to
exist together in a single state. Mythology supplies a figure
under which the lesson may be taught (as Protagoras says,
* the myth is more interesting '), and also enables Plato to touch
lightly on new principles without going into details. In this
passage he shadows forth a general truth, but he does not tell
us by what steps the transposition of ranks is to be effected.
Indeed throughout the Republic he allows the lower ranks to
fade into the distance. We do not know whether they are to
carry arms, and whether in the fifth book they are or are not
included in the communistic regulations respecting property
and marriage. Nor is there any use in arguing strictly either
from a few chance words, or from the silence of Plato, or
in drawing inferences which were beyond his vision. Aris-
totle, in his criticism on the position of the lower classes, does
not perceive that the poetical creation is 'like the air, invulner-
able,' and cannot be penetrated by the shafts of his logic (Pol. 2,
5, 18 foil.).
6. Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the
highest degree fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him
many reflections, are to be found in the third book of the Re-
public : first, the great power of music, so much beyond any
influence which is experienced by us in modern times, when
the art or science has been far more developed, and has found
liv Relation of mind and body.
Republic the secret of harmony, as well as of melody ; secondly, the
i TR D indefinite and almost absolute control which the soul is supposed
to exercise over the body.
In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as
we may also observe among certain masters of the art, not
unknown to us, at the present day. With this natural enthu-
siasm, which is felt by a few only, there seems to mingle in
Plato a sort of Pythagorean reverence for numbers and numerical
proportion to which Aristotle is a stranger. Intervals of sound
and number are to him sacred things which have a law of their
own, not dependent on the variations of sense. They rise above
sense, and become a connecting link with the world of ideas.
But it is evident that Plato is describing what to him appears
to be also a fact. The power of a simple and characteristic
melody on the impressible mind of the Greek is more than
we can easily appreciate. The effect of national airs may bear
some comparison with it. And, besides all this, there is a
confusion between the harmony of musical notes and the har-
mony of soul and body, which is so potently inspired by them.
The second paradox leads up to some curious and in-
teresting questions— How far can the mind control the body?
Is the relation between them one of mutual antagonism or of
mutual harmony ? Are they two or one, and is either of them
the cause of the other ? May we not at times drop the opposition
between them, and the mode of describing them, which is so
familiar to us, arid yet hardly conveys any precise meaning, and try
to view this composite creature, man, in a more simple manner ?
Must we not at any rate admit that there is in human nature a
higher and a lower principle, divided by no distinct line, which at
times break asunder and take up arms against one another ? Or
again, they are reconciled and move together, either unconsciously
in the ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit of some
noble aim, to be attained not without an effort, and for which
every thought and nerve are strained. And then the body be-
comes the good friend or ally, or servant or instrument of the
mind. And the mind has often a wonderful and almost super-
human power of banishing disease and weakness and calling out
a hidden strength. Reason and the desires, the intellect and the
senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as to form a
The management of health. Iv
single human being. They are ever parting, ever meeting ; and Republic
the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for lNTROpUC.
the most part unnoticed by us. When the mind touches the body TION-
through the appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the
one to the other. There is a tendency in us which says ' Drink.'
There is another which says, * Do not drink ; it is not good for
you.' And we all of us know which is the rightful superior. We
are also responsible for our health, although into this sphere there
enter some elements of necessity which maybe beyond our control.
Still even in the management of health, care and thought, continued
over many years, may make us almost free agents, if we do not
exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that all
human freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.
We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general con-
demnation which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing
in his own day, depreciates the effects of diet. He would like
to have diseases of a definite character and capable of receiving
a definite treatment. He is afraid of invalidism interfering with
the business of life. He does not recognize that time is the
great healer both of mental and bodily disorders; and that
remedies which are gradual and proceed little by little are safer
than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither -does
he see that there is no way in which the mind can more
surely influence the body than by the control of eating and
drinking; or any other action or occasion of human life on
which the higher freedom of the will can be more simply or
truly asserted.
7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked, (i) The affected
ignorance of music, which is Plato's way of expressing that
he is passing lightly over the subject. (2) The tentative manner
in which here, as in the second book, he proceeds with the
construction of the State. (3) The description of the State some-
times as a reality (389 D ; 416 B), and then again as a work of
imagination only (cp. 534 C ; 592 B) ; these are the arts by which
he sustains the reader's interest. (4) Connecting links (e. g.
408 C with 379), or the preparation (394 D) for the entire ex-
pulsion of the poets in Book x. (5) The companion pictures
of the lover of litigation and the valetudinarian (405), the satirical
jest about the maxim of Phocylides (407), the manner in which
Ivi Analysis 419-422.
Republic the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up into the
subject (4l6 ^)» and tne argument fr°m the practice of Asclepius
(407), should not escape notice.
ANALYSIS. BOOK IV. Adeimantus said : ' Suppose a person to argue, Step]
Socrates, that you make your citizens miserable, and this by 4I^
their own free-will ; they are the lords of the city, and yet in-
stead of having, like other men, lands and houses and money
of their own, they live as mercenaries and are always mounting
guard.' You may add, I replied, that they receive no pay but 420
only their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or a
mistress. ' Well, and what answer do you give ? ' My answer is,
that our guardians may or may not be the happiest of men,— I
should not be surprised to find in the long-run that they were,
— but this is not the aim of our constitution, which was de-
signed for the good of the whole and not of any one part. If
I went to a sculptor and blamed him for having painted the
eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not purple but
black, he would reply : ' The eye must be an eye, and you
should look at the statue as a whole.' * Now I can well imagine
a fool's paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking,
clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and
have their wheel at hand, that they may work a little when
they please ; and cobblers and all the other classes of a State 421
lose their distinctive character. And a State may get on with-
out cobblers ; but when the guardians degenerate into boon
companions, then the ruin is complete. Remember that we
are not talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in
which every man is expected to do his own work. The hap-
piness resides not in this or that class, but in the State as a
whole. I have another remark to make :— A middle con-
dition is best for artisans; they should have money enough
to buy tools, and not enough to be independent of business.
And will not the same condition be best for our citizens ? If 422
they are poor, they will be mean ; if rich, luxurious and lazy ;
and in neither case contented. ' But then how will our poor
city be able to go to war against an enemy who has money ? '
There may be a difficulty in fighting against one enemy ; against
two there will be none. In the first place, the contest will be
Analysis 422-425. Ivii
carried on by trained warriors against well-to-do citizens : and Republic
IV.
ANALYSIS.
is not a regular athlete an easy match for two stout opponents
at least ? Suppose also, that before engaging we send ambas-
sadors to one of the two cities, saying, ' Silver and gold we
have not ; do you help us and take our share of the spoil ; ' —
who would fight against the lean, wiry dogs, when they might join
with them in preying upon the fatted sheep ? ' But if many states
join their resources, shall we not be in danger ? ' I am amused
to hear you use the word 'state' of any but our own State.
423 They are ' states,' but not ' a state '—many in one. For in every
state there are two hostile nations, rich and poor, which you
may set one against the other. But our State, while she remains
true to her principles, will be in very deed the mightiest of
Hellenic states.
To the size of the state there is no limit but the necessity of
unity ; it must be neither too large nor too small to be one. This
is a matter of secondary importance, like the principle of trans-
position which was intimated in the parable of the earthborn men.
The meaning there implied was that every man should do that
for which he was fitted, and be at one with himself, and then the
whole city would be united. But all these things are secondary,
424 if education, which is the great matter, be duly regarded. When
the wheel has once been set in motion, the speed is always in-
creasing ; and each generation improves upon the preceding,
both in physical and moral qualities. The care of the governors
should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from inno-
vation ; alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will
soon end by altering its laws. The change appears innocent at
first, and begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious,
working secretly upon the characters of individuals, then upon
social and commercial relations, and lastly upon the institutions
425 of a state ; and there is ruin and confusion everywhere. But if
education remains in the established form, there will be no
danger. A restorative process will be always going on; the
spirit of law and order will raise up what has fallen down. Nor
will any regulations be needed for the lesser matters of life — rules
of deportment or fashions of dress. Like invites like for good
or for evil. Education will correct deficiencies and supply the
power of self-government. Far be it from us to enter into the
Iviii Analysis 425-427.
Republic particulars of legislation ; let the guardians take care of education,
ANALYSIS. anc* e^ucat^on w^ ta^e care of all other things.
But without education they may patch and mend as they please ;
they will make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks
to cure himself by some favourite remedy and will not give up
his luxurious mode of living. If you tell such persons that they 426
must first alter their habits, then they grow angry; they are
charming people. * Charming, — nay, the very reverse.' Evi-
dently these gentlemen are not in your good graces, nor the
state which is like them. And such states there are which first
ordain under penalty of death that no one shall alter the con-
stitution, and then suffer themselves to be flattered into and
out of anything ; and he who indulges them and fawns upon them,
is their leader and saviour. 'Yes, the men are as bad as the
states.' But do you not admire their cleverness ? * Nay, some
of them are stupid enough to believe what the people tell them.'
And when all the world is telling a man that he is six feet
high, and he has no measure, how can he believe anything else ?
But don't get into a passion : to see our statesmen trying their
nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the Hydra- 427
like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. Minute enact-
ments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad
ones.
And now what remains of the work of legislation ? Nothing for
us ; but to Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the
greatest of all things— that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral
deity sitting upon the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted
by us if we have any sense, in an affair of such magnitude. No
foreign god shall be supreme in our realms
INTRODUC- Here, as Socrates would say, let us ' reflect on ' (o-KOTrfytf v) what
TION.
has preceded : thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of
the citizens, but only of the well-being of the State. They may be
the happiest of men, but our principal aim in founding the State
was not to make them happy. They were to be guardians, not
holiday-makers. In this pleasant manner is presented to us the
famous question both of ancient and modern philosophy, touching
the relation of duty to happiness, of right to utility.
First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral
ideas. The utilitarian principle is valuable as a corrective of
Happiness and duty. lix
error, and shows to us a side of ethics which is apt to be neglected. Republic
It may be admitted further that right and utility are co-extensive,
and that he who makes the happiness of mankind his object TION-
has one of the highest and noblest motives of human action. But
utility is not the historical basis of morality ; nor the aspect in
which moral and religious ideas commonly occur to the mind.
The greatest happiness of all is, as we believe, the far-off result
of the divine government of the universe. The greatest happiness
of the individual is certainly to be found in a life of virtue and
goodness. But we seem to be more assured of a law of right than
we can be of a divine purpose, that 'all mankind should be
saved ; ' and we infer the one from the other. And the greatest
happiness of the individual may be the reverse of the greatest
happiness in the ordinary sense of the term, and may be realised
in a life of pain, or in a voluntary death. Further, the word
' happiness ' has several ambiguities ; it may mean either pleasure
or an ideal life, happiness subjective or objective, in this world or
in another, of ourselves only or of our neighbours and of all men
everywhere. By the modern founder of Utilitarianism the self-
regarding and disinterested motives of action are included under
the same term, although they are commonly opposed by us as
benevolence and self-love. The word happiness has not the
definiteness or the sacredness of ' truth ' and ' right ' ; it does not
equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the
conscience of mankind. It is associated too much with the com-
forts and conveniences of life ; too little with ' the goods of the soul
which we desire for their own sake.' In a great trial, or danger,
or temptation, or in any great and heroic action, it is scarcely
thought of. For these reasons ' the greatest happiness ' principle
is not the true foundation of ethics. But though not the first
principle, it is the second, which is like unto it, and is often of
easier application. For the larger part of human actions are
neither right nor wrong, except in so far as they tend to the
happiness of mankind (cp. Introd. to Gorgias and Philebus).
The same question reappears in politics, where the useful or
expedient seems to claim a larger sphere and to have a greater
authority. For concerning political measures, we chiefly ask :
How will they affect the happiness of mankind ? Yet here too we
may observe that what we term .expediency is merely the law of
Ix Idealism in Politics.
Republic right limited by the conditions of human society. Right and truth
INTR D c are *^e highest aims of government as well as of individuals ; and
TION. we ought not to lose sight of them because we cannot directly
enforce them. They appeal to the better mind of nations ; and
sometimes they are too much for merely temporal interests to
resist. They are the watchwords which all men use in matters of
public policy, as well as in their private dealings ; the peace of
Europe may be said to depend upon them. In the most com-
mercial and utilitarian states of society the power of ideas remains.
And all the higher class of statesmen have in them something of
that idealism which Pericles is said to have gathered from the
teaching of Anaxagoras. They recognise that the true leader of
men must be above the motives of ambition, and that national
character is of greater value than material comfort and prosperity.
And this is the order of thought in Plato ; first, he expects
his citizens to do their duty, and then under favourable circum-
stances, that is to say, in a well-ordered State, their happi-
ness is assured. That he was far from excluding the modern
principle of utility in politics is sufficiently evident from other
passages, in which ' the most beneficial is affirmed to be the most
honourable ' (v. 457 B), and also ' the most sacred ' (v. 458 E).
We may note (i) The manner in which the objection of Adei-
mantus here, as in ii. 357 foil., 363 ; vi. ad init. etc., is designed to
draw out and deepen the argument of Socrates. (2) The con-
ception of a whole as lying at the foundation both of politics and
of art, in the latter supplying the only principle of criticism,
which, under the various names of harmony, symmetry, measure,
proportion, unity, the Greek seems to have applied to works of
art. (3) The requirement that the State should be limited in
size, after the traditional model of a Greek state ; as in the
Politics of Aristotle (vii. 4, etc.), the fact that the cities of Hellas
were small is converted into a principle. (4) The humorous
pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the light active
boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the ' charming '
patients who are always making themselves worse ; or again, the
playful assumption that there is no State but our own ; or the
grave irony with which the statesman is excused who believes that
he is six feet high because he is told so, and having nothing to
measure with is to be pardoned for his ignorance— he is too
Analysis 427-430. Ixi
amusing for us to be seriously angry with him. (5) The light and Republic
superficial manner in which religion is passed over when pro- ^
vision has been made for two great principles, — first, that religion TION.
shall be based on the highest conception of the gods (ii. 377 foil.),
secondly, that the true national or Hellenic type shall be main-
tained
Socrates proceeds : But where amid all this is justice ? Son of ANALYSIS.
Ariston, tell me where. Light a candle and search the city, and get
your brother and the rest of our friends to help in seeking for her.
* That won't do,' replied Glaucon, ' you yourself promised to make
the search and talked about the impiety of deserting justice.' Well,
I said, I will lead the way, but do you follow. My notion is, that
our State being perfect will contain all the four virtues — wisdom,
428 courage, temperance, justice. If we eliminate the three first, the
unknown remainder will be justice.
First then, of wisdom : the State which we have called into
being will be wise because politic. And policy is one among
many kinds of skill, — not the skill of the carpenter, or of the
worker in metal, or of the husbandman, but the skill of him who
advises about the interests of the whole State. Of such a kind is
429 the skill of the guardians, who are a small class in number, far
smaller than the blacksmiths ; but in them is concentrated the
wisdom of the State. And if this small ruling dass have wisdom,
then the whole State will be wise.
Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in
finding in another class — that of soldiers. Courage may be
defined as a sort of salvation — the never-failing salvation of the
opinions which law and education have prescribed concerning
dangers. You know the way in which dyers first prepare the
white ground and then lay on the dye of purple or of any other
colour. Colours dyed in this way become fixed, and no soap or
430 lye will ever wash them out. Now the ground is education, and
the laws are the colours; and if the ground is properly laid,
neither the soap of pleasure nor the lye of pain or fear will ever
wash them out. This power which preserves right opinion about
danger I would ask you to call ' courage,' adding the epithet
'political ' or ' civilized ' in order to distinguish it from mere animal
courage and from a higher courage which may hereafter be
discussed.
Ixii Analysis 431-434.
Republic Two virtues remain ; temperance and justice. More than the
ANALYSIS. Prececu'ng virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. 431
Some light is thrown upon the nature of this virtue by the popular
description of a man as ' master of himself '—which has an absurd
sound, because the master is also the servant. The expression
really means that the better principle in a man masters the worse.
There are in cities whole classes — women, slaves and the like —
who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the better ; and in
our State the former class are held under control by the latter.
Now to which of these classes does temperance belong ? * To both
of them.' And our State if any will be the abode of temperance ;
and we were right in describing this virtue as a harmony which
is diffused through the whole, making the dwellers in the city to 432 ,
be of one mind, and attuning the upper and middle and lower
classes like the strings of an instrument, whether you suppose
them to differ in wisdom, strength or wealth.
And now we are hear the spot ; let us draw in and surround the
cover and watch with all our eyes, lest justice should slip away
and escape. Tell me, if you see the thicket move first. * Nay, I
would have you lead.' Well then, offer up a prayer and follow.
The way is dark and difficult ; but we must push on. I begin to
see a track. ' Good news.' Why, Glaucon, our dulness of scent
is quite ludicrous ! While we are straining our eyes into the
distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as bad as
people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have 433
you forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every
man doing his own business, concerning which we spoke at the
foundation of the State— what but this was justice ? Is there any
other virtue remaining which can compete with wisdom and
temperance and courage in the scale of political virtue ? For
* every one having his own ' is the great object of government ; and
the great object of trade is that every man should do his own 434
business. Not that there is much harm in a carpenter trying to
be a cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself into a carpenter ;
but great evil may arise from the cobbler leaving his last and
turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a single individual
is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. And this evil is injustice,
or every man doing another's business. I do not say that as yet
we are in a condition to arrive at a final conclusion. For the
The definition of justice. Ixiii
definition which we believe to hold good in states has still to be Republic
IV
tested by the individual. Having read the large letters we will ANALYSIS.
435 now come back to the small. From the two together a brilliant
light may be struck out. . . .
Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method INTRODUC-
of residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of
the three parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the
State, although the third, temperance, has more of the nature of a
harmony than the first two. If there be a fourth virtue, that can
only be sought for in the relation of the three parts in the soul or
classes in the State to one another. It is obvious and simple, and
for that very reason has not been found out. The modern logician
will be inclined to object that ideas cannot be separated like
chemical substances, but that they run into one another and may
be only different aspects or names of the same thing, and such in
this instance appears to be the case. For the definition here given
of justice is verbally the same as one of the definitions of temper-
ance given by Socrates in the Charmides (162 A), which however
is only provisional, and is afterwards rejected. And so far from
justice remaining over when the other virtues are eliminated, the
justice and temperance of the Republic can with difficulty be
distinguished. Temperance appears to be the virtue of a part
only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of the
whole soul. Yet on the other hand temperance is also described
as a sort of harmony, and in this respect is akin to justice. Justice
seems to differ from temperance in degree rather than in kind ;
whereas temperance is the harmony of discordant elements,
justice is the perfect order by which all natures and classes
do their own business, the right man in the right place, the
division and co-operation of all the citizens. Justice, again, is a
more abstract notion than the other virtues, and therefore, from
Plato's point of view, the foundation of them, to which they are
referred and which in idea precedes them. The proposal to
omit temperance is a mere trick of style intended to avoid
monotony (cp. vii. 528).
There is a famous question discussed in one of the earlier
Dialogues of Plato (Protagoras, 329, 330 ; cp. Arist. Nic. Ethics, vi.
13. 6), ' Whether the virtues are one or many ? ' This receives an
answer which is to the effect that there are four cardinal virtues
Ixiv Analysis 435-437.
Republic (now for the first time brought together in ethical philosophy),
INTRODUC- anc* one suPreme °ver the rest, which is not like Aristotle's
TION. conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others, but the
whole of virtue relative to the parts. To this universal conception
of justice or order in the first education and in the moral nature of
man, the still more universal conception of the good in the second
education and in the sphere of speculative knowledge seems to
succeed. Both might be equally described by the terms Maw,'
'order/ 'harmony;' but while the idea of good embraces 'all
time and all existence,' the conception of justice is not extended
beyond man.
ANALYSIS. . . . Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the
State. But first he must prove that there are three parts of the
individual soul. His argument is as follows : — Quantity makes no
difference in quality. The word 'just/ whether applied to the
individual or to the State, has the same meaning. And the term
'justice ' implied that the same three principles in the State and in
the individual were doing their own business. But are they really
three or one ? The question is difficult, and one which can hardly
be solved by the methods which we are now using ; but the truer
and longer way would take up too much of our time. 'The
shorter will satisfy me*' Well then, you would admit that the
qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who
compose them? The Scythians and Thracians are passionate,
our own race intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians 436
covetous, because the individual members of each have such and
such a character ; the difficulty is to determine whether the
several principles are one or three ; whether, that is to say, we
reason with one part of our nature, desire with another, are angry
with another, or whether the whole soul comes into play in each
sort of action. This enquiry, however, requires a very exact
definition of terms. The same thing in the same relation cannot
be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no impossibility in
a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which
is fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no
necessity to mention all the possible exceptions ; let us pro- 437
visionally assume that opposites cannot do or be or suffer
opposites in the same relation. And to the class of opposites
belong assent and dissent, desire and avoidance. And one form
Analysis 437-441, Ixv
of desire is thirst and hunger : and here arises a new point— Republic
IV.
ANALYSIS.
thirst is thirst of drink, hunger is hunger of food ; not of warm
438 drink or of a particular kind of food, with the single exception of
course that the very fact of our desiring anything implies that it is
good. When relative terms have no attributes, their correlatives
have no attributes ; when they have attributes, their correlatives
also have them. For example, the term 'greater' is simply
relative to ' less,' and knowledge refers to a subject of knowledge.
But on the other hand, a particular knowledge is of a particular
subject. Again, every science has a distinct character, which is
defined by an object ; medicine, for example, is the science of
439 health, although not to be confounded with health. Having cleared
our ideas thus far, let us return to the original instance of thirst,
which has a definite object — drink. Now the thirsty soul may feel
two distinct impulses ; the animal one saying ' Drink ; ' the rational
one, which says * Do not drink.' The two impulses are contradic-
tory ; and therefore we may assume that they spring from distinct
principles in the soul. But is passion a third principle, or akin to
desire ? There is a story of a certain Leontius which throws some,
• light on this question. He was coming up from the Piraeus
outside the north wall, and he passed a spot where there were
dead bodies lying by the executioner. He felt a longing desire to
see them and also an abhorrence of them ; at first he turned away
440 and shut his eyes, then, suddenly tearing them open, he said, —
4 Take your fill, ye wretches, of the fair sight.' Now is there
not here a third principle which is often found to come to the
assistance of reason against desire, but never of desire against
reason ? This is passion or spirit, of the separate existence of
which we may further convince ourselves by putting the following
case : — When a man suffers justly, if he be of a generous nature
he is not indignant at the hardships which he undergoes \
but when he suffers unjustly, his indignation is his great support ;
hunger and thirst cannot tame him ; the spirit within him must;
do or die, until the voice of the shepherd, that is, of reason,
bidding his dog bark no more, is heard within. This shows
441 that passion is the ally of reason. Is passion then the same with
reason ? No, for the former exists in children and brutes ; and
Homer affords a proof of the distinction between them when he
says, ' He smote his breast, and thus rebuked his soul.'
Ixvi Analysis 441-445.
Republic And now, at last, we have reached firm ground, and are able to
ANALYSIS ^GT tnat t^le v^rtues °^ tne State and of the individual are the
same. For wisdom and courage and justice in the State are
severally the wisdom and courage and justice in the individuals
who form the State. Each of the three classes will do the work
of its own class in the State, and each part in the individual soul ;
reason, the superior, and passion, the inferior, will be harmonized 442
by the influence of music and gymnastic. The counsellor and the
warrior, the head and the arm, will act together in the town of
Mansoul, and keep the desires in proper subjection. The courage
of the warrior is that quality which preserves a right opinion
about dangers in spite of pleasures and pains. The wisdom of
the counsellor is that small part of the soul which has authority
and reason. The virtue of temperance is the friendship of the
ruling and the subject principles, both in the State and in the
individual. Of justice we have already spoken ; and the notion
already given of it may be confirmed by common instances.
Will the just state or the just individual steal, lie, commit adultery, 443
or be guilty of impiety to gods and men ? ' No.' And is not the
reason of this that the several principles, whether in the state or
in the individual, do their own business ? And justice is the
quality which makes just men and just states. Moreover, our old
division of labour, which required that there should be one man
for one use, was a dream or anticipation of what was to follow ;
and that dream has now been realized in justice, which begins by
binding together the three chords of the soul, and then acts
harmoniously in every relation of life. And injustice, which is 444
the insubordination and disobedience of the inferior elements in
the soul, is the opposite of justice, and is inharmonious and
unnatural, being to the soul what disease is to the body ; for in the
soul as well as in the body, good or bad actions produce good or
bad habits. And virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of
the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of
the soul.
Again the old question returns upon us : Is justice or injustice 445
the more profitable ? The question has become ridiculous. For
injustice, like mortal disease, makes life not worth having. Come
up with me to the hill which overhangs the city and look down
upon the single form of virtue, and the infinite forms of vice,
The laws of contradiction. Ixvii
among which are four special ones, characteristic both of states Republic
and of individuals. And the state which corresponds to the
ANALYSIS.
single form of virtue is that which we have been describing,
wherein reason rules under one of two names — monarchy and
aristocracy. Thus there are five forms in all, both of states and of
souls. . . .
In attempting to prove that the soul has three separate faculties, INTRODUC-
Plato takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties.
And the criterion which he proposes is difference in the working
of the faculties. The same faculty cannot produce contradic-
tory effects. But the path of early reasoners is beset by thorny
entanglements, and he will not proceed a step without first
clearing the ground. This leads him into a tiresome digression,
which is intended to explain the nature of contradiction. First,
the contradiction must be at the same time and in the same
relation. Secondly, no extraneous word must be introduced
into either of the terms in which the contradictory proposition
is expressed : for example, thirst is of drink, not of warm drink.
He implies, what he does not say, that if, by the advice of reason,
or by the impulse of anger, a man is restrained from drinking,
this proves that thirst, or desire under which thirst is included, is
distinct from anger and reason. But suppose that we allow
the term ' thirst ' or ' desire ' to be modified, and say an ' angry
thirst,' or a 'revengeful desire,' then the two spheres of desire
and anger overlap and become confused. This case therefore
has to be excluded. And still there remains an exception to
the rule in the use of the term * good,' which is always implied
in the object of desire. These are the discussions of an age
before logic ; and any one who is wearied by them should re-
member that they are necessary to the clearing up of ideas in
the first development of the human faculties.
The psychology of Plato extends no further than the division
of the soul into the rational, irascible, and concupiscent elements,
which, as far as we know, was first made by him, and has
been retained by Aristotle and succeeding ethical writers. The
chief difficulty in this early analysis of the mind is to define
exactly the place of the irascible faculty (tfv/udf), which may be
variously described under the terms righteous indignation, spirit,
passion. It is the foundation of courage, which includes in Plato
f2
Ixviii Passion and desire.
Republic moral courage, the courage of enduring pain, and of surmounting
INTRODUC- intellectual difficulties, as well as of meeting dangers in war.
TICK. Though irrational, \\ inclines to side with the rational : it cannot
be aroused by punishment when justly inflicted : it sometimes
takes the form of an enthusiasm which sustains a man in the per-
formance of great actions. It is the ' lion heart ' with which the
reason makes a treaty (ix. 589 B). On the other hand it is nega-
tive rather than positive ; it is indignant at wrong or falsehood, but
does not, like Love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aspire to the
vision of Truth or Good. It is the peremptory military spirit
which prevails in the government of honour. It differs from anger
(opyr)), this latter term having no accessory notion of righteous
indignation. Although Aristotle has retained the word, yet we
may observe that * passion ' (0u/*os) has with him lost its affinity
to the rational and has become indistinguishable from 'anger*
(opyrj). And to this vernacular use Plato himself in the Laws
seems to revert (ix. 836 B), though not always (v. 731 A). By
modern philosophy too, as well as in our ordinary conversation,
the words anger or passion are employed almost exclusively
in a bad sense ; there is no connotation of a just or reasonable
cause by which they are aroused. The feeling of ' righteous in-
dignation ' is too partial and accidental to admit of our regarding
it as a separate virtue or habit. We are tempted also to doubt
whether Plato is right in supposing that an offender, however
justly condemned, could be expected to acknowledge the justice
of his sentence ; this is the spirit of a philosopher or martyr rather
than of a criminal.
We may observe (p. 444 D, E) how nearly Plato approaches
Aristotle's famous thesis, that ' good actions produce good habits.'
The words ' as healthy practices (fWiyflev/iara) produce health, so
do just practices produce justice,' have a sound very like the
Nicomachean Ethics. But we note also that an incidental remark
in Plato has become a far-reaching principle in Aristotle, and an
inseparable part of a great Ethical system.
There is a difficulty in understanding what Plato meant by
* the longer way ' (435 D ; cp. infra, vi. 504) : he seems to intimate
some metaphysic of the future which will not be satisfied with
arguing from the principle of contradiction. In the sixth and
seventh books (compare Sophist and Parmenides) he has given
The longer way. Ixix
us a sketch of such a metaphysic : but when Glaucon asks for Republic
IV.
the final revelation of the idea of good, he is put off with the INTRODUC.
declaration that he has not yet studied the preliminary sciences. TION-
How he would have filled up the sketch, or argued about such
questions from a higher point of view, we can only conjecture.
Perhaps he hoped to find some a priori method of developing
the parts out of the whole ; or he might have asked which of
the ideas contains the other ideas, and possibly have stumbled
on the Hegelian identity of the ' eg6 ' and the ' universal.7 Or
he may have imagined that ideas might be constructed in some
manner analogous to the construction of figures and numbers
in the mathematical sciences. The most certain and necessary
truth was to Plato the universal; and to this he was always
seeking to refer all knowledge or opinion, just as in modern
times we seek to rest them on the opposite pole of induction
and experience. The aspirations of metaphysicians have always
tended to pass beyond the limits of human thought and language :
they seem to have reached a height at which they are ' moving
about in worlds unrealized,' and theft conceptions, although
profoundly affecting their own minds, become invisible or un-
intelligible to others. We are not therefore surprized to find
that Plato himself has nowhere clearly explained his doctrine
of ideas ; or that his school in a later generation, like his con-
temporaries Glaucon and Adeimantus, were unable to follow
him in this region of speculation. In the Sophist, where he is
refuting the scepticism which maintained either that there was no
such thing as predication, or that all might be predicated of all, he
arrives at the conclusion that some ideas combine with some,
but not all with all. But he makes only one or two steps forward
on this path; he nowhere attains to any connected system of
ideas, or even to a knowledge of the most elementary relations
of the sciences to one another (see infra).
Steph. BOOK V. I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice ANALYSIS.
449 or decline in states, when Polemarchus— he was sitting a little
farther from me than Adeimantus— taking him by the coat and
leaning towards him, said something in an undertone, of which
I only caught the words, ' Shall we let him off?' 'Certainly
not,' said Adeimantus, raising his voice* Whom, I said, are you
Ixx Analysis 449-452.
Republic not going to let off? * You,3 he said. Why ? ' Because we think
ANALYSIS ^at ^ou are not Dealing fairly with us in omitting women and
children, of whom you have slily disposed under the general
formula that friends have all things in common.' And was I
not right? 'Yes/ he replied, 'but there are many sorts of
communism or community, and we want to know which of them
is right. The company, as you have just heard, are resolved
to have a further explanation.' Thrasymachus said, * Do you 450
think that we have come hither to dig for gold, or to hear you
discourse ? ' Yes, I said ; but the discourse should be of a reason-
able length. Glaucon added, •' Yes, Socrates, and there is reason
in spending the whole of life in such discussions ; but pray, with-
out more ado, tell us how this community is to be carried out,
and how the interval between birth and education is to be
filled up.' Well, I said, the subject has several difficulties —
What is possible ? is the first question. What is desirable ? is
the second. ' Fear not,' he replied, ' for you are speaking among
friends.' That, I replied, is a sorry consolation ; I shall destroy
my friends as well as myself. Not that I mind a little innocent 45 *
laughter ; but he who kills the truth is a murderer. ' Then,' said
Glaucon, laughing, ' in case you should murder us we will acquit
you beforehand, and you shall be held free from the guilt of
deceiving us.'
• Socrates proceeds : — The guardians of our state are to be
watch-dogs, as we have already said. Now dogs are not divided
into hes and shes — we do not take the masculine gender out
to hunt and leave the females at home to look after their puppies.
They have the same employments — the only difference between
them is that the one sex is stronger and the other weaker. But
if women are to have the same employments as men, they
must have the same education — they must be taught music
and gymnastics, and the art of war. I know that a great joke 452
will be made of their riding on horseback and carrying weapons ;
the sight of the naked old wrinkled women showing their agility
in the palaestra will certainly not be a vision of beauty, and may
be expected to become a famous jest But we must not mind
the wits ; there was a time when they might have laughed at
our present gymnastics. All is habit : people have at last found
out that the exposure is better than the concealment of the
Analysis 452-456. Ixxi
person, and now they laugh no more. Evil only should be the Republic
ANALYSIS.
subject of ridicule.
453 The first question is, whether women are able either wholly or
partially to share in the employments of men. And here we
may be charged with inconsistency in making the proposal at all.
For we started originally with the division of labour ; and the
diversity of employments was based on the difference of natures.
But is there no difference between men and women ? Nay,
are they not wholly different ? There was the difficulty, Glaucon,
which made me unwilling to speak of family relations. However,
when a man is out of his depth, whether in a pool or in an ocean,
he can only swim for his life ; and we must try to find a way of
escape, if we can.
454 The argument is, that different natures have different uses, and
the natures of men and women are said to differ. But this is only
a verbal opposition. We do not consider that the difference
may be purely nominal and accidental ; for example, a bald man
and a hairy man are opposed in a single point of view, but
you cannot infer that because a bald man is a cobbler a hairy
man ought not to be a cobbler. Now why is such an inference
erroneous? Simply because the opposition between them is
partial only, like the difference between a male physician and
a female physician, not running through the whole nature, like the
difference between a physician and a carpenter. And if the
difference of the sexes is only that the one beget and the other
bear children, this does not prove that they ought to have
455 distinct educations. Admitting that women differ from men in
capacity, do not men equally differ from one another? Has
not nature scattered all the qualities which our citizens require
indifferently up and down among the two sexes ? and even in
their peculiar pursuits, are not women often, though in some
cases superior to men, ridiculously enough surpassed by them?
Women are the same in kind as men, and have the same aptitude
456 or want of aptitude for medicine or gymnastic or war, but in a
less degree. One woman will be a good guardian, another not ;
and the good must be chosen to be the colleagues of our
guardians. If however their natures are the same, the inference
is that their education must also be the same ; there is no longer
anything unnatural or impossible in a woman learning music
Ixxii Analysis 456-460.
Republic and gymnastic. And the education which we give them will
ANALYSIS ^e the vei%v ^est, ^T suPer*or to that °f cobblers, and will train
up the very best women, and nothing can be more advantageous to
the State than this. Therefore let them strip, clothed in their 457
chastity, and share in the toils of war and in the defence of their
country ; he who laughs at them is a fool for his pains.
The first wave is past, and the argument is compelled to admit
that men and women have common duties and pursuits. A
second and greater wave is rolling in — community of wives and
children ; is this either expedient or possible ? The expediency
I do not doubt ; I am not so sure of the possibility. ' Nay, I
think that a considerable doubt will be entertained on both
points.' I meant to have escaped the trouble of proving the
first, but as you have detected the little stratagem I must even
submit. Only allow me to feed my fancy like the solitary in his 45 8
walks, with a dream of what might be, and then I will return to
the question of what can be.
In the first place our rulers will enforce the laws and make new
ones where they are wanted, and their allies or ministers will
obey. You, as legislator, have already selected the men ; and
how you shall select the women. After the selection has been
made, they will dwell in common houses and have their meals in
common, and will be brought together by a necessity more certain
than that of mathematics. But they cannot be allowed to live in
licentiousness ; that is an unholy thing, which the rulers are
determined to prevent. For the avoidance of this, holy marriage
festivals will be instituted, and their holiness will be in proportion 459
to their usefulness. And here, Glaucon, I should like to ask (as
I know that you are a breeder of birds and animals), Do you
not take the greatest care in the mating ? * Certainly.' And there
is no reason to suppose that less care is required in the marriage
of human beings. But then our rulers must be skilful physicians
of the State, for they will often need a strong dose of falsehood in
order to bring about desirable unions between their subjects.
The good must be paired with the good, and the bad with the
bad, and the offspring of the one must be reared, and of the other
destroyed ; in this way the flock will be preserved in prime
condition. Hymeneal festivals will be celebrated at times fixed 460
with an eye to population, and the brides and bridegrooms will
Analysis 460-462. Ixxiii
meet at them ; and by an ingenious system of lots the rulers will Republic
contrive that the brave and the fair come together, and that those '
of inferior breed are paired with inferiors — the latter will ascribe
to chance what is really the invention of the rulers. And when
children are born, the offspring of the brave and fair will be
carried to an enclosure in a certain part of the city, and there
attended by suitable nurses ; the rest will be hurried away to
places unknown. The mothers will be brought to the fold and
will suckle the children; care however must be taken that none
of them recognise their own offspring ; and if necessary other
nurses may also be hired. The trouble of watching and getting
up at night will be transferred to attendants. ' Then the wives of
our guardians will have a fine easy time when they are having
children.' And quite right too, I said, that they should.
The parents ought to be in the prime of life, which for a man
may be reckoned at thirty years — from twenty-five, when he
461 has ' passed the point at which the speed of life is greatest,'
to fifty-five ; and at twenty years for a woman — from twenty to
forty. Any one above or below those ages who partakes in
the hymeneals shall be guilty of impiety ; also every one who
forms a marriage connexion at other times without the consent
of the rulers. This latter regulation applies to those who are
within the specified ages, after which they may range at will;
provided they avoid the prohibited degrees of parents and children,
or of brothers and sisters, which last, however, are not absolutely
prohibited, if a dispensation be procured. ' But how shall we
know the degrees of affinity, when all things are common ? '
The answer is, that brothers and sisters are all such as are born
seven or nine months after the espousals, and their parents those
462 who are then espoused, and every one will have many children
and every child many parents.
Socrates proceeds : I have now to prove that this scheme is
advantageous and also consistent with our entire polity. The
greatest good of a State is unity ; the greatest evil, discord and
distraction. And there will be unity where there are no private
pleasures or pains or interests— where if one member suffers
all the members suffer, if one citizen is touched all are quickly
sensitive ; and the least hurt to the little finger of the State runs
through the whole body and vibrates to the soul. For the true
Ixxiv Analysis 462-466.
Republic State, like an individual, is injured as a whole when any part
ANALYSIS *s an<ecte^' Every State has subjects and rulers, who in a 463
democracy are called rulers, and in other States masters : but in
our State they are called saviours and allies; and the subjects
who in other States are termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers
and paymasters, and those who are termed comrades and
colleagues in other places, are by us called fathers and brothers.
And whereas in other States members of the same government
regard one of their colleagues as a friend and another as an
enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to another ; for every
citizen is connected with every other by ties of blood, and these
names and this way of speaking will have a corresponding
reality — brother, father, sister, mother, repeated from infancy in
the ears of children, will not be mere words. Then again the 464
citizens will have all things in common, and having common
property they will have common pleasures and pains.
Can there be strife and contention among those who are of
one mind ; or lawsuits about property when men have nothing
but their bodies which they call their own ; or suits about
violence when every one is bound to defend himself? The
permission to strike when insulted will be an ' antidote ' to 465
the knife and will prevent disturbances in the State. But
no younger man will strike an elder ; reverence will prevent
him from laying hands on his kindred, and he will fear that the
rest of the family may retaliate. Moreover, our citizens will be
rid of the lesser evils of life ; there will be no flattery of the rich,
no sordid household cares, no borrowing and not paying. Com-
pared with the citizens of other States, ours will be Olympic
victors, and crowned with blessings greater still — they and their
children having a better maintenance during life, and after death
an honourable burial. Nor has the happiness of the individual 466
been sacrificed to the happiness of the State (cp. iv. 419 E) ; our
Olympic victor has not been turned into a cobbler, but he has
a happiness beyond that of any cobbler. At the same time, if any
conceited youth begins to dream of appropriating the State to
himself, he must be reminded that ' half is better than the whole.'
' I should certainly advise him to stay where he is when he has the
promise of such a brave life.'
- But is such a community possible ? — as among the animals, so
Analysis 466-469. Ixxv
also among men ; and if possible, in what way possible ? About Republic
war there is no difficulty; the principle of communism is adapted . ^
to military service. Parents will take their children to look on
467 at a battle, just as potters' boys are trained to the business by
looking on at the wheel. And to the parents themselves, as to
other animals, the sight of their young ones will prove a great
incentive to bravery. Young warriors must learn, but they must
not run into danger, although a certain degree of risk is worth
incurring when the benefit is great. The young creatures should
be placed under the care of experienced veterans, and they should
have wings — that is to say, swift and tractable steeds on which
468 they may fly away and escape. One of the first things to be done
is to teach a youth to ride.
Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of
husbandmen ; gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken
prisoners, may be presented to the enemy. But what shall be
done to the hero? First of all he shall be crowned by all the
youths in the army ; secondly, he shall receive the right hand of
fellowship ; and thirdly, do you think that there is any harm in
his being kissed ? We have already determined that he shall
have more wives than others, in order that he may have as many
children as possible. And at a feast he shall have more to eat ;
we have the authority of Homer for honouring brave men with
' long chines,' which is an appropriate compliment, because meat
•is a very strengthening thing. Fill the bowl then, and give the
best seats and meats to the brave — may they do them good !
And he who dies in battle will be at once declared to be of the
golden race, and will, as we believe, become one of Hesiod's
469 guardian angels. He shall be worshipped after death in the
manner prescribed by the oracle ; and not only he, but all other
benefactors of the State who die in any other way, shall be
admitted to the same honours.
The next question is, How shall we treat our enemies ? Shall
Hellenes be enslaved ? No ; for there is too great a risk of the
whole race passing under the yoke of the barbarians. Or shall
the dead be despoiled ? Certainly not ; for that sort of thing is an
excuse for skulking, and has been the ruin of many an army*
There is meanness and feminine malice in making an enemy
of the dead body, when the soul which was the owner has fled —
Ixxvi Analysis 469-473.
Republic like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels with the
ANALYSIS stones which are thrown at him instead. Again, the arms of
Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods ; they 470
are a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar
grounds there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic
territory — the houses should not be burnt, nor more than the
annual produce carried off. For war is of two kinds, civil and
foreign ; the first of which is properly termed c discord,' and only
the second ' war ; ' and war between Hellenes is in reality civil
War — a quarrel in a family, which is ever to be regarded as
unpatriotic and unnatural, and ought to be prosecuted with a view 47 *
to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of those who
would chasten but not utterly enslave. The war is not against
a whole nation who are a friendly multitude of men, women,
and children, but only against a few guilty persons ; when they
are punished peace will be restored. That is the way in which
Hellenes should war against one another — and against barbarians,
as they war against one another now.
' But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question :
Is such a State possible? I grant all and more than you say
about the blessedness of being one family — fathers, brothers,
mothers, daughters, going out to war together ; but I want to
ascertain the possibility of this ideal State.' You are too un- 472
merciful. The first wave and the second wave I have hardly
escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the third.
When you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to
take pity. * Not a whit.'
Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search
after justice, and the just man answered to the just State. Is this
ideal at all the worse for being impracticable ? Would the picture
of a perfectly beautiful man be any the worse because no such
man ever lived ? Can any reality come up to the idea ? Nature
Will not allow words to be fully realized ; but if I am to try and 473
realize the ideal of the State in a measure, I think that an
approach may be made to the perfection of which I dream by one
or two, I do not say slight, but possible changes in the present
constitution of States. I would reduce them to a single one — the
great wave, as I call it. Until, then, kings are philosophers, or
philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill ; no, nor the
Analysis 473-477. Ixxvii
human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being. I know Republic
that this is a hard saying, which few will be able to receive. ANALySIS
* Socrates, all the world will take off his coat and rush upon you
474 with sticks and stones, and therefore I would advise you to
prepare an answer.' You got me into the scrape, I said. * And
I was right,' he replied ; ' however, I will stand by you as a sort
of do-nothing, well-meaning ally.' Having the . help of such a
champion, I will do my best to maintain my position. And first, \
must explain of whom I speak and what sort of natures these are who
are to be philosophers and rulers. As you are a man of pleasure,
you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate lovers are in their
attachments ; they love all, and turn blemishes into beauties. The
snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace ; the beak of
another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark
are manly, the fair angels ; the sickly have a new term of endear-
475 ment invented expressly for them, which is ' honey-pale.' Lovers of
wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their affection
in every form. Now here comes the point : — The philosopher too is
a lover of knowledge in every form ; he has an insatiable curiosity.
' But will curiosity make a philosopher ? Are the lovers of sights,
and sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac
festivals, to be called philosophers ? ' They are not true philoso-
phers, but only an imitation. * Then how are we to describe the.
true?'
You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as
476 justice, beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their
various combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize
these realities are philosophers ; whereas the other class hear
sounds and see colours, and understand their use in the arts, but
cannot attain to the true or waking vision of absolute justice or
beauty or truth ; they have not the light of knowledge, but of
opinion, and what they see is a dream only. Perhaps he of
whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify
him without revealing the disorder of his mind ? Suppose
we say that, if he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but
knowledge must be of something which is, as ignorance is of
477 something which is not ; and there is a third thing, which both is
and is not, and is matter of opinion only. Opinion and knowledge,
then, having distinct objects, must also be distinct faculties. And
Ixxviii Analysis 477-480.
Republic by faculties I mean powers unseen and distinguishable only by the
ANALYSIS din<erence m tneir objects, as opinion and knowledge differ, since
the one is liable to err, but the other is unerring and is the
mightiest of all our faculties. If being is the object of knowledge,
and not-being of ignorance, and these are the extremes, opinion 478
must lie between them, and may be called darker than the one
and brighter than the other. This intermediate or contingent
matter is and is not at the same time, and partakes both of
existence and of non-existence. Now I would ask my good 479
friend, who denies abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a
many beautiful and a many just, whether everything he sees
is not in some point of view different — the beautiful ugly, the
pious impious, the just unjust ? Is not the double also the half,
and are not heavy and light relative terms which pass into one
another ? Everything is and is not, as in the old riddle — ' A man
and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird with a
stone and not a stone.' The mind cannot be fixed on either alterna-
tive; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects,
which have a disorderly movement in the region between being
and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable 480
objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels
in the world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of
things, is not a philosopher, but a lover of opinion only. . . .
TION.
INTRODUC- The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which
the community of property and of family are first maintained,
and the transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers.
For both of these Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in
some chance words of Book IV (424 A), which fall unperceived on
the reader's mind, as they are supposed at first to have fallen on
the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus. The ( paradoxes,' as Morgen-
stern terms them, of this book of the Republic will be reserved for
another place ; a few remarks on the style, and some explanations
of difficulties, may be briefly added.
First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of
scheme or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the
third and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of
them. All that can be said of the extravagance of Plato's proposals
is anticipated by himself. Nothing is more admirable than the
The ' table of affinities! Ixxix
hesitation with which he proposes the solemn text, 'Until kings Republic
are philosophers,' &c. ; or the reaction from the sublime to the TRODU
ridiculous, when Glaucon describes the manner in which the new TION-
truth will be received by mankind.
Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of
the communistic plan. Nothing is told us of the application of
communism to the lower classes ; nor is the table of prohibited
degrees capable of being made out. It is quite possible that a
child born at one hymeneal festival may marry one of its own
brothers or sisters, or even one of its parents, at another. Plato is
afraid of incestuous unions, but at the same time he does not wish
to bring before us the fact that the city would be divided into families
of those born seven and nine months after each hymeneal festival.
If it were worth while to argue seriously about such fancies, we
might remark that while all the old affinities are abolished, the
newly prohibited affinity rests not on any natural or rational
principle, but only upon the accident of children having been born
in the same month and year. Nor does he explain how the lots
could be so manipulated by the legislature as to bring together
the fairest and best. The singular expression (460 E) which is
employed to describe the age of five-and-twenty may perhaps
be taken from some poet.
In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the
nature of philosophy derived from love are more suited to the
apprehension of Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to
modern tastes or feelings (cp. V. 474, 475). They are partly facetious,
but also contain a germ of truth. That science is a whole, remains
a true principle of inductive as well as of metaphysical philosophy;
and the love of universal knowledge is still the characteristic of
the philosopher in modern as well as in ancient times.
At the end of the fifth book Plato introduces the figment of con-
tingent matter, which has exercised so great an influence both on
the Ethics and Theology of the modern world, and which occurs
here for the first time in the history of philosophy. He did not
remark that the degrees of knowledge in the subject have nothing
corresponding to them in the object. With him a word must
answer to an idea ; and he could not conceive of an opinion which
was an opinion about nothing. The influence of analogy led him
to invent ' parallels and conjugates ' and to overlook facts. To us
Ixxx Necessary confusion of ideas in Plato.
Republic some of his difficulties are puzzling only from their simplicity ; we
INTRO'DUO ^° not Perce^ve tnat tne answer to them ' is tumbling out at our
TION. feet.' To the mind of early thinkers, the conception of not-being
was dark and mysterious (Sophist, 254 A) ; they did not see that
this terrible apparition which threatened destruction to all know-
ledge was only a logical determination. The common term under
which, through the accidental use of language, two entirely different
ideas were included was another source of confusion. Thus
through the ambiguity of doKclv, </>cuVrai, eotKei/, K.T.X. Plato, at-
tempting to introduce order into the first chaos of human thought,
seems to have confused perception and opinion, and to have
failed to distinguish the contingent from the relative. In the
Theaetetus the first of these difficulties begins to clear up ; in the
Sophist the second ; and for this, as well as for other reasons,
both these dialogues are probably to be regarded as later than the
Republic.
ANALYSIS. BOOK VI. Having determined that the many have no know- Steph.
ledge of true being, and have no clear patterns in their minds of
justice, beauty, truth, and that philosophers have such patterns, we
have now to ask whether they or the many shall be rulers in our
State. But who can doubt that philosophers should be chosen, if
they have the other qualities which are required in a ruler ? For 485
they are lovers of the knowledge of the eternal and of all truth ;
they are 'haters of falsehood ; their meaner desires are absorbed in
the interests of knowledge ; they are spectators of all time and all
existence ; and in the magnificence of their contemplation the life 486
of man is as nothing to them, nor is death fearful. Also they are
of a social, gracious disposition, equally free from cowardice and
arrogance. They learn and remember easily; they have har-
monious, well-regulated minds ; truth flows to them sweetly by
nature. Can the god of Jealousy himself find any fault with such 487
an assemblage of good qualities ?
Here Adeimantus interposes : — ' No man can answer you,
Socrates ; but every man feels that this is owing to his own
deficiency in argument. He is driven from one position to
another, until he has nothing more to say, just as an un-
skilful player at draughts is reduced to his last move by a
more skilled opponent. And yet all the time he may be right-
Analysis 487-490. Ixxxi
He may know, in this very instance, that those who make Republic
philosophy the business of their lives, generally turn out rogues if
they are bad men, and fools if they are good. What do you say ? '
I should say that he is quite right. 'Then how is such an ad-
mission reconcileable with the doctrine that philosophers should
be kings ? '
488 I shall answer you in a parable which will also let you see how
poor a hand I am at the invention of allegories. The relation of
good men to their governments is so peculiar, that in order to
defend them I must take an illustration from the world of fiction.
Conceive the captain of a ship, taller by a head and shoulders than
any of the crew, yet a little deaf, a little blind, and rather ignorant
of the seaman's art. The sailors want to steer, although they »
know nothing of the art ; and they have a theory that it cannot
be learned. If the helm is refused them, they drug the captain's
posset, bind him hand and foot, and take possession of the ship.
He who joins in the mutiny is termed a good pilot and what not ; %
they have no conception that the true pilot must observe the
winds and the stars, and must be their master, whether they like
it or not; — such an one would be called by them fool, prater,
^89 star-gazer. This is my parable ; which I will beg you to interpret
for me to those gentlemen who ask why the philosopher has such
an evil name, and to explain to them that not he, but those who will
not use him, are to blame for his uselessness. The philosopher
should not beg of mankind to be put in authority over them. The
wise man should not seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every
man, whether rich or poor, must knock at the door of the physician
when he has need of him. Now the pilot is the philosopher — he
whom in the parable they call star-gazer, and the mutinous sailors
are the mob of politicians by whom he is rendered useless. Not
that these are the worst enemies of philosophy, who is far more
dishonoured by her own professing sons when they are corrupted
^90 by the world. Need I recall the original image of the philosopher ?
Did we not say of him just now, that he loved truth and hated
falsehood, and that he could not rest in the multiplicity of pheno-
mena, but was led by a sympathy in his own nature to the
contemplation of the absolute ? All the virtues as well as truth,
who is the leader of them, took up their abode in his soul. But as
you were observing, ii we turn aside to view the reality, we see
g
Ixxxii Analysis 490-493.
Republic that the persons who were thus described, with the exception of a
VI.
ANALYSIS.
small and useless class, are utter rogues.
The point which has to be considered, is the origin of this
corruption in nature. Every one will admit that the philosopher, 491
in our description of him, is a rare being. But what numberless
causes tend to destroy these rare beings ! There is no good
thing which may not be a cause of evil — health, wealth, strength,
rank, and the virtues themselves, when placed under unfavourable
circumstances. For as in the animal or vegetable world the
strongest seeds most need the accompaniment of good air and soil,
so the best of human characters turn out the worst when they fall
upon an unsuitable soil ; whereas weak natures hardly ever do
any considerable good or harm ; they are not the stuff out of which
either great criminals or great heroes are made. The philosopher 492
follows the same analogy : he is either the best or the worst of all
men. Some persons say that the Sophists are the corrupters of
youth ; but is not public opinion the real Sophist who is every-
where present— in those very persons, in the assembly, in the
courts, in the camp, in the applauses and hisses of the theatre re-
echoed by the surrounding hills ? Will not a young man's heart
leap amid these discordant sounds ? and will any education save
him from being carried away by the torrent ? Nor is this all. For
if he will not yield to opinion, there follows the gentle compulsion
of exile or death. What principle of rival Sophists or anybody
else can overcome in such an unequal contest ? Characters there
may be more than human, who are exceptions — God may save a 493
man, but not his own strength. Further, I would have you
consider that the hireling Sophist only gives back to the world
their own opinions ; he is the keeper of the monster, who knows
how to flatter or anger him, and observes the meaning of his
inarticulate grunts. Good is what pleases him, evil what he
dislikes ; truth and beauty are determined only by the taste of the
brute. Such is the Sophist's wisdom, and such is the condition
of those who make public opinion the test of truth, whether in art
or in morals. The curse is laid upon them of being and doing
what it approves, and when they attempt first principles the
failure is ludicrous. Think of all this and ask yourself whether the
world is more likely to be a believer in the unity of the idea, or in
the multiplicity of phenomena. And the world if not a believer
Analysis 494-497. Ixxxiii
194 in the idea cannot be a philosopher, and must therefore be a Republic
persecutor of philosophers. There is another evil : — the world
does not like to lose the gifted nature, and so they flatter the
young [Alcibiades] into a magnificent opinion of his own capacity;
the tall, proper youth begins to expand, and is dreaming of
kingdoms and empires. If at this instant a friend whispers to him,
' Now the gods lighten thee ; thou art a great fool ' and must be
educated— do you think that he will listen ? Or suppose a better^
sort of man who is attracted towards philosophy, will they not
1-95 make Herculean efforts to spoil and corrupt him? Are we not
right in saying that the love of knowledge, no less than riches, may
divert him ? Men of this class [Critias] often become politicians —
they are the authors of great mischief in states, and sometimes
also of great good. And thus philosophy is deserted by her
natural protectors, and others enter in and dishonour her. Vulgar
little minds see the land open and rush from the prisons of the
arts into her temple. A clever mechanic having a soul coarse as
his body, thinks that he will gain caste by becoming her suitor.
For philosophy, even in her fallen estate, has a dignity of her own
— and he, like a bald little blacksmith's apprentice as he is, having
made some money and got out of durance, washes and dresses
196 himself as a bridegroom and marries his master's daughter. What
will be the issue of such marriages ? Will they not be vile and
bastard, devoid of truth and nature ? ' They will.' Small, then, is
the remnant of genuine philosophers ; there may be a few who
are citizens of small states, in which politics are not worth thinking
of, or who have been detained by Theages' bridle of ill health ; for
my own case of the oracular sign is almost unique, and too rare
to be worth mentioning. And these few when they have tasted
the pleasures of philosophy, and have taken a look at that den of
thieves and place of wild beasts, which is human life, will stand
aside from the storm under the shelter of a wall, and try to
preserve their own innocence and to depart in peace. * A great
work, too, will have been accomplished by them.' Great, yes, but
not the greatest ; for man is a social being, and can only attain his
highest development in the society which is best suited to him.
497 Enough, then, of the causes why philosophy has such an evil
name. Another question is, Which of existing states is suited
to her ? Not one of them ; at present she is like some exotic seed
Ixxxiv Analysis 497-499.
Republic which degenerates in a strange soil ; only in her proper state will
ANALYSIS s^e ^e shown to be °f heavenly growth. ' And is her proper state
ours or some other ? ' Ours in all points but one, which was left
undetermined. You may remember our saying that some living
mind or witness of the legislator was needed in states. But we
were afraid to enter upon a subject of such difficulty, and now
the question recurs and has not grown easier : — How may philo-
^sophy be safely studied ? Let us bring her into the light of day,
and make an end of the inquiry.
In the first place, I say boldly that nothing can be worse than
the present mode of study. Persons usually pick up a little 498
philosophy in early youth, and in the intervals of business, but
they never master the real difficulty, which is dialectic. Later,
perhaps, they occasionally go to a lecture on philosophy. Years
advance, and the sun of philosophy, unlike that of Heracleitus,
sets never to rise again. This order of education should be re-
versed; it should begin with gymnastics in youth, and as the
man strengthens, he should increase the gymnastics of his soul.
Then, when active life is over, let him finally return to philosophy.
'You are in earnest, Socrates, but the world will be equally
earnest in withstanding you — no one more than Thrasymachus.'
Do not make a quarrel between Thrasymachus and me, who were
never enemies and are now good friends enough. And I shall do
my best to convince him and all mankind of the truth of my words,
or at any rate to prepare for the future when, in another life, we
may again take part in similar discussions. * That will be a long
time hence/ Not long in comparison with eternity. The many
will probably remain incredulous, for they have never seen the
natural unity of ideas, but only artificial juxtapositions; not
free and generous thoughts, but tricks of controversy and quips
of law ; — a perfect man ruling in a perfect state, even a single 499
one they have not known. And we foresaw that there was no
chance of perfection either in states or individuals until a ne-
cessity was laid upon philosophers — not the rogues, but those
whom we called the useless class — of holding office ; or until
the sons of kings were inspired with a true love of philosophy.
Whether in the infinity of past time there has been, or is in
some distant land, or ever will be hereafter, an ideal such as we
have described, we stoutly maintain that there has been, is, and
Analysis 499-502. Ixxxv
will be such a state whenever the Muse of philosophy rules. Republic
ANALYSIS.
500 Will you say that the world is of another mind ? O, my friend,
do not revile the world ! They will soon change their opinion
if they are gently entreated, and are taught the true nature of the
philosopher. Who can hate a man who loves him ? or be jealous
of one who has no jealousy? Consider, again, that the many
hate not the true but the false philosophers— the pretenders who
force their way in without invitation, and are always speaking
of persons and not of principles, which is unlike the spirit of
philosophy. For the true philosopher despises earthly strife ;
his eye is fixed on the eternal order in accordance with which
he moulds himself into the Divine image (and not himself only,
but other men), and is the creator of the virtues private as well as
public. When mankind see that the happiness of states is only
to be found in that image, will they be angry with us for attempt-
ing to delineate it ? ' Certainly not. But what will be the process
;oi of delineation ? ' The artist will do nothing until he has made
a tabula rasa ; on this he will inscribe the constitution of a state,
glancing often at the divine truth of nature, and from that deriving
the godlike among men, mingling the two elements, rubbing out
and painting in, until there is a perfect harmony or fusion of
the divine and human. But perhaps the world will doubt the
existence of such an artist. What will they doubt? That the
philosopher is a lover of truth, having a nature akin to the best ? —
and if they admit this will they still quarrel with us for making
philosophers our kings ? ' They will be less disposed to quarrel.'
;o2 Let us assume then that they are pacified. Still, a person may
hesitate about the probability of the son of a king being a philo-
sopher. And we do not deny that they are very liable to be
corrupted ; but yet surely in the course of ages there might be
one exception — and one is enough. If one son of a king were
a philosopher, and had obedient citizens, he might bring the ideal
polity into being. Hence we conclude that our laws are not
only the best, but that they are also possible, though not free from
difficulty.
I gained nothing by evading the troublesome questions which
arose concerning women and children. I will be wiser now
and acknowledge that we must go to the bottom of another
question : What is to be the education of our guardians ? It was
Ixxxvi Analysis 503-506.
Republic agreed that they were to be lovers of their country, and were 503
ANALY* to ^e testec^ m tne refiner's fire of pleasures and pains, and those
who came forth pure and remained fixed in their principles were
to have honours and rewards in life and after death. But at this
point, the argument put on her veil and turned into another path.
I hesitated to make the assertion which I now hazard, — that our
guardians must be philosophers. You remember all the contra-
dictory elements, which met in the philosopher— how difficult to
find them all in a single person ! Intelligence and spirit are not
often combined with steadiness; the stolid, fearless, nature is
averse to intellectual toil. And yet these opposite elements are
all necessary, and therefore, as we were saying before, the
aspirant must be tested in pleasures and dangers ; and also, as
we must now further add, in the highest branches of knowledge. 504
You will remember, that when we spoke of the virtues mention
was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied to leave
unexplored. 'Enough seemed to have been said.' Enough, my
friend ; but what is enough while anything remains wanting ?
Of all men the guardian must not faint in the search after truth ;
he must be prepared to take the longer road, or he will never
reach that higher region which is above the four virtues ; and of
the virtues too he must not only get an outline, but a clear and
distinct vision. (Strange that we should be so precise about
trifles, so careless about the highest truths!) 'And what are
the highest ? ' You to pretend unconsciousness, when you have 505
so often heard me speak of the idea of good, about which we
know so little, and without which though a man gain the world
he has no profit of it ! Some people imagine that the good is
wisdom ; but this involves a circle, — the good, they say, is wisdom,
wisdom has to do with the good. According to others the good is
pleasure ; but then comes the absurdity that good is bad, for there
are bad pleasures as well as good. Again, the good must have
reality ; a man may desire the appearance of virtue, but he will
not desire the appearance of good. Ought our guardians then
to be ignorant of this supreme principle, of which every man 506
has a presentiment, and without which no man has any real
knowledge of anything? 'But, Socrates, what is this supreme
principle, knowledge or pleasure, or what? You may think me
troublesome, but I say that you have no business to be always
Analysis 506-509. Ixxxvii
repeating the doctrines of others instead of giving us your own.' Republic
Can I say what I do not know? 'You may offer an opinion.'
ANALYSIS.
And will the blindness and crookedness of opinion content you
when you might have the light and certainty of science ? ' I will
only ask you to give such an explanation of the good as you have
given already of temperance and justice.' I wish that I could, but
in my present mood I cannot reach to the height of the knowledge
507 of the good. To the parent or principal I cannot introduce you,
but to the child begotten in his image, which I may compare with
the interest on the principal, I will. (Audit the account, and do
not let me give you a false statement of the debt.) You remember
our old distinction of the many beautiful and the one beautiful,
the particular and the universal, the objects of sight and the
objects of thought? Did you ever consider that the objects of
sight imply a faculty of sight which is the most complex and
costly of our senses, requiring not only objects of sense, but also
a medium, which is light ; without which the sight will not distin-
508 guish between colours and all will be a blank ? For light is
the noble bond between the perceiving faculty and the thing
perceived, and the god who gives us light is the sun, who is
the eye of the .day, but is not to be confounded with the eye
of man. This eye of the day or sun is what I call the child
of the good, standing in the same relation to the visible world
as the good to the intellectual. When the sun shines the eye
sees, and in the intellectual world where truth is, there is sight
and light. Now that which is the sun of intelligent natures,
is the idea of good, the cause of knowledge and truth, yet
509 other and fairer than they are, and standing in the same relation
to them in which the sun stands to light. O inconceivable
height of beauty, which is above knowledge and above truth !
('You cannot surely mean pleasure,' he said. Peace, I replied.)
And this idea of good, like the sun, is also the cause of growth,
and the author not of knowledge only, but of being, yet greater
far than either in dignity and power. ' That is a reach of thought
more than human ; but, pray, go on with the image, for I suspect
that there is more behind.' There is, I said ; and bearing in mind
our two suns or principles, imagine further their corresponding
worlds — one of the visible, the other of the intelligible ; you may
assist your fancy by figuring the distinction under the image
Ixxxviii Analysis 509-511.
Republic of a line divided into two unequal parts, and may again subdivide
ANA ' each part into two lesser segments representative of the stages of
knowledge in either sphere. The lower portion of the lower or
visible sphere will consist of shadows and reflections, and its 510
upper and smaller portion will contain real objects in the world
of nature or of art. The sphere of the intelligible will also
have two divisions,— one of mathematics, in which there is no
ascent but all is descent ; no inquiring into premises, but only
drawing of inferences. In this division the mind works with
figures and numbers, the images of which are taken not from
the shadows, but from the objects, although the truth of them is
seen only with the mind's eye ; and they are used as hypotheses
without being analysed. Whereas in the other division reason 511
uses the hypotheses as stages or steps in the ascent to the idea of
good, to which she fastens them, and then again descends, walking
firmly in the region of ideas, and of ideas only, in her ascent as
well as descent, and finally resting in them,. 'I partly under-
stand,' he replied ; ' you mean that the ideas of science are
superior to the hypothetical, metaphorical conceptions of geometry
and the other arts or sciences, whichever is to be the name of
them ; and the latter conceptions you refuse to make subjects of
pure intellect, because they have no first principle, although when
resting on a first principle, they pass into the higher sphere.'
You understand me very well, I said. And now to those four
divisions of knowledge you may assign four corresponding
faculties — pure intelligence to the highest sphere ; active intelli-
gence to the second ; to the third, faith ; to the fourth, the
perception of shadows — and the clearness of the several faculties
will be in the same ratio as the truth of the objects to which they
are related
INTRODUC- Like Socrates, we may recapitulate the virtues of the philo-
sopher. In language which seems to reach beyond the horizon
of that age and country, he is described as * the spectator of all
time and all existence.' He has the noblest gifts of nature, and
makes the highest use of them. All his desires are absorbed
in the love of wisdom, which is the love of truth. None of the
graces of a beautiful soul are wanting in him ; neither can he
fear death, or think much of human life. The ideal of modern
Portrait of the Philosopher, Ixxxix
times hardly retains the simplicity of the antique ; there is not the Republic
same originality either in truth or error which characterized the INTBOD'UC.
Greeks. The philosopher is no longer living in the unseen, nor TION-
is he sent by an oracle to convince mankind of ignorance ; nor
does he regard knowledge as a system of ideas leading upwards
by regular stages to the idea of good. The eagerness of the
pursuit has abated ; there is more division of labour and less of
comprehensive reflection upon nature and human life as a whole ;
more of exact observation and less of anticipation and inspiration.
Still, in the altered conditions of knowledge, the parallel is not
wholly lost ; and there may be a use in translating the conception
of Plato into the language of our own age. The philosopher in
modern times is one who fixes his mind on the laws of nature in
their sequence and connexion, not on fragments or pictures of
nature ; on history, not on controversy; on the truths which are
acknowledged by the few, not on the opinions of the many. He is
aware of the importance of ' classifying according to nature,' and
will try to ' separate the limbs of science without breaking them '
(Phaedr. 265 E). There is no part of truth, whether great or
small, which he will dishonour ; and in the least things he will
discern the greatest (Parmen. 130 C). Like the ancient philoso-
pher he sees the world pervaded by analogies, but he can also
tell 'why in some cases a single instance is sufficient for an
induction ' (Mill's Logic, 3, 3, 3), while in other cases a thousand
examples would prove nothing. He inquires into a portion of
knowledge only, because the whole has grown too vast to be
embraced by a single mind or life. He has a clearer concep-
tion of the divisions of science and of their relation to the mind
of man than was possible to the ancients. Like Plato, he has a
vision of the unity of knowledge, not as the beginning of philo-
sophy to be attained by a study of elementary mathematics, but
as the far-off result of the working of many minds in many ages.
He is aware that mathematical studies are preliminary to almost
every other ; at the same time, he will not reduce all varieties of
knowledge to the type of mathematics. He too must have a
nobility of character, without which genius loses the better half
of greatness. Regarding the world as a point in immensity, and
each individual as a link in a never-ending chain of existence, he
will not think much of his own life, or be greatly afraid of death.
xc The Criticism of Adeimantus.
Republic Adeimantus objects first of all to the form of the Socratic
INTRODUC- reasonmg> thus showing that Plato is aware of the imperfection
TION. Of his own method. He brings the accusation against himself
which might be brought against him by a modern logician— that
he extracts the answer because he knows how to put the ques-
tion. In a long argument words are apt to change their meaning
slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions inferred with
rather too much certainty or universality; the variation at each
step may be unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes
considerable. Hence the failure of attempts to apply arithmetical
or algebraic formulae to logic. The imperfection, or rather the
higher and more elastic nature of language, does not allow words
to have the precision of numbers or of symbols. And this quality
in language impairs the force of an argument which has many
steps.
The objection, though fairly met by Socrates in this particular
instance, may be regarded as implying a reflection upon the
Socratic mode of reasoning. And here, as at p. 506 B, Plato
seems to intimate that the time had come when the negative
and interrogative method of Socrates must be superseded by a
positive and constructive one, of which examples are given in
some of the later dialogues. Adeimantus further argues that the
ideal is wholly at variance with facts ; for experience proves
philosophers to be either useless or rogues. Contrary to all
expectation (cp. p. 497 for a similar surprise) Socrates has no
hesitation in admitting the truth of this, and explains the anomaly
in an allegory, first characteristically depreciating his own in-
ventive powers. In this allegory the people are distinguished
from the professional politicians, and, as at pp. 499, 500, are
spoken of in a tone of pity rather than of censure under the
image of 'the noble captain who is not very quick in his per-
ceptions.'
The uselessness of philosophers is explained by the circum-
stance that mankind will not use them. The world in all ages
has been divided between contempt and fear of those who employ
the power of ideas and know no other weapons. Concerning the
false philosopher, Socrates argues that the best is most liable to
corruption ; and that the finer nature is more likely to suffer
from alien conditions. We too observe that there are some kinds
The paradoxical reply of Socrates. xci
of excellence which spring from a peculiar delicacy of consti- Republic
tution ; as is evidently true of the poetical and imaginative tern-
perament, which often seems to depend on impressions, and
hence can only breathe or live in a certain atmosphere. The
man of genius has greater pains and greater pleasures, greater
powers and greater weaknesses, and often a greater play of
character than is to be found in ordinary men. He can assume
the disguise of virtue or disinterestedness without having them,
or veil personal enmity in the language of patriotism and philo-
sophy,—he can say the word which all men are thinking, he has
an insight which is terrible into the follies and weaknesses of his
fellow-men. An Alcibiades, a Mirabeau, or a Napoleon the
First, are born either to be the authors of great evils in states,
or * of great good, when they are drawn in that direction.'
Yet the thesis, ' corruptio optimi pessima,' cannot be maintained
generally or without regard to the kind of excellence which is
corrupted. The alien conditions which are corrupting to one
nature, may be the elements of culture to another. In general
a man can only receive his highest development in a congenial
state or family, among friends or fellow-workers. But also he
may sometimes be stirred by adverse circumstances to such a
degree that he rises up against them and reforms them. And
while weaker or coarser characters will extract good out of evil,
say in a corrupt state of the church or of society, and live on
happily, allowing the evil to remain, the finer or stronger natures
may be crushed or spoiled by surrounding influences — may be-
come misanthrope and philanthrope by turns ; or in a few
instances, like the founders of the monastic orders, or the Re-
formers, owing to some peculiarity in themselves or in their age,
may break away entirely from the world and from the church,
sometimes into great good, sometimes into great evil, sometimes
into both. And the same holds in the lesser sphere of a convent,
a school, a family.
Plato would have us consider how easily the best natures are
overpowered by public opinion, and what efforts the rest of man-
kind will make to get possession of them. The world, the
church, their own profession, any political or party organization,
are always carrying them off their legs and teaching them to
apply high and holy names to their own prejudices and interests.
xcu The better mind of the many.
Republic The 'monster' corporation to which they belong judges right
and truth to be the pleasure of the community. The individual
INTRODUC-
TION, becomes one with his order ; or, if he resists, the world is too
much for him, and will sooner or later be revenged on him.
This is, perhaps, a one-sided but not wholly untrue picture of the
maxims and practice of mankind when they 'sit down together
at an assembly,' either in ancient or modern times.
When the higher natures are corrupted by politics, the lower
take possession of the vacant place of philosophy. This is de-
scribed in one of those continuous images in which the argument,
to use a Platonic expression, ' veils herself,' and which is dropped
and reappears at intervals. The question is asked, — Why are
the citizens of states so hostile to philosophy ? The answer is,
that they do not know her. And. yet there is also a better mind
of the many; they would believe if they were taught. But
hitherto they have only known a conventional imitation of philo-
sophy, words without thoughts, systems which have no life in
them ; a [divine] person uttering the words of beauty and free-
dom, the friend of man holding communion with the Eternal,
and seeking to frame the state in that image, they have never
known. The same double feeling respecting the mass of man*
kind has always existed among men. The first thought is that
the people are the enemies of truth and right ; the second, that
this only arises out of an accidental error and confusion, and that
they do not really hate those who love them, if they could be
educated to know them.
In the latter part of the sixth book, three questions have to be
considered : ist, the nature of the longer and more circuitous
way, which is contrasted with the shorter and more imperfect
method of Book IV; and, the heavenly pattern or idea of the
state ; 3rd, the relation of the divisions of knowledge to one
another and to the corresponding faculties of the soul.
i. Of the higher method of knowledge in Plato we have only a
glimpse. Neither here nor in the Phaedrus or Symposium, nor
yet in the Philebus or Sophist, does he give any clear explanation
of his meaning. He would probably have described his method
as proceeding by regular steps to a system of universal know-
ledge, which inferred the parts from the whole rather than the
whole from the parts. This ideal logic is not practised by him
The better and longer way. xciii
in the search after justice, or in the analysis of the parts of the Republic
soul ; there, like Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues
from experience and the common use of language. But at the
end of the sixth book he conceives another and more perfect
method, in which all ideas are only steps or grades or moments
of thought, forming a connected whole which is self-supporting,
and in which consistency is the test of truth. He does not
explain to us in detail the nature of the process. Like many
other thinkers both in ancient and modern times his mind seems
to be filled with a vacant form which he is unable to realize. He
supposes the sciences to have a natural order and connexion in
an age when they can hardly be said to exist. He is hastening
on to the ' end of the intellectual world ' without even making a
beginning of them.
In modern times we hardly need to be reminded that the
process of acquiring knowledge is here confused with the con-
templation of absolute knowledge. In all science a priori and
a posteriori truths mingle in various proportions. The a priori
part is that which is derived from the most universal experience
of men, or is universally accepted by them ; the a posteriori is
that which grows up around the more general principles and
becomes imperceptibly one with them. But Plato erroneously
imagines that the synthesis is separable from the analysis, and
that the method of science can anticipate science. In entertaining
such a vision of a priori knowledge he is sufficiently justified,
or at least his meaning may be sufficiently explained by the
similar attempts of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and even of Bacon
himself, in modern philosophy. Anticipations or divinations, or
prophetic glimpses of truths whether concerning man or nature,
seem to stand in the same relation to ancient philosophy which
hypotheses bear to modern inductive science. These ( guesses
at truth ' were not made at random ; they arose from a superficial
impression of uniformities and first principles in nature which
the genius of the Greek, contemplating the expanse of heaven and
earth, seemed to recognize in the distance. Nor can we deny
that in ancient times knowledge must have stood still, and the
human mind been deprived of the very instruments of thought,
if philosophy had been strictly confined to the results of ex-
perience.
xciv The confusion of ideas and numbers.
Republic 2. Plato supposes that when the tablet has been made blank the
artist will fill in the lineaments of the ideal state. Is this a pattern
INTRODUC-
TION, laid up in heaven, or mere vacancy on which he is supposed to
gaze with wondering eye? The answer is, that such ideals are
framed partly by the omission of particulars, partly by imagina-
tion perfecting the form which experience supplies (Phaedo, 74).
Plato represents these ideals in a figure as belonging to another
world ; and in modern times the idea will sometimes seem to
precede, at other times to co-operate with the hand of the artist.
As in science, so also in creative art, there is a synthetical as well
as an analytical method. One man will have the whole in his
mind before he begins; to another the processes of mind and
hand will be simultaneous.
3. There is no difficulty in seeing that Plato's divisions of
knowledge are based, first, on the fundamental antithesis of
sensible and intellectual which pervades the whole pre-Socratic
philosophy ; in which is implied also the opposition of the per-
manent and transient, of the universal and particular. But the
age of philosophy in which he lived seemed to require a further
distinction ; — numbers and figures were beginning to separate
from ideas. The world could no longer regard justice as a cube,
and was learning to see, though imperfectly, that the abstractions
of sense were distinct from the abstractions of mind. Between
the Eleatic being or essence and the shadows of phenomena,
the Pythagorean principle of number found a place, and was,
as Aristotle remarks, a conducting medium from one to the other.
Hence Plato is led to introduce a third term which had not
hitherto entered into the scheme of his philosophy. He had ob-
served the use of mathematics in education ; they were the best
preparation for higher studies. The subjective relation between
them further suggested an objective one; although the passage
from one to the other is really imaginary (Metaph. i, 6, 4). For
metaphysical and moral philosophy has no connexion with mathe-
matics ; number and figure are the abstractions of time and space,
not the expressions of purely intellectual conceptions. When
divested of metaphor, a straight line or a square has no more
to do with right and justice than a crooked line with vice. The
figurative association was mistaken for a real one ; and thus the
three latter divisions of the Platonic proportion were constructed.
The correlation of the faculties. xcv
There is more difficulty in comprehending how he arrived at Republic
the first term of the series, which is nowhere else mentioned, INTROOUC
and has no reference to any other part of his system. Nor indeed TION-
does the relation of shadows to objects correspond to the relation
of numbers to ideas. Probably Plato has been led by the love
of analogy (cp. Timaeus, p. 32 B) to make four terms instead of
three, although the objects perceived in both divisions of the
lower sphere are equally objects of sense. He is also preparing
the way, as his manner is, for the shadows of images at the begin-
ning of the seventh book, and the imitation of an imitation in
the tenth. The line may be regarded as reaching from unity
to infinity, and is divided into two unequal parts, and subdivided
into two more; each lower sphere is the multiplication of the
preceding. Of the four faculties, faith in the lower division has an
intermediate position (cp. for the use of the word faith or belief,
Tn'o-ris, Timaeus, 29 C, 37 B), contrasting equally with the vagueness
of the perception of shadows (ei/cao-t'a) and the higher certainty of
understanding (dtavoia) and reason (i/ous).
The difference between understanding and mind or reason
(vovs) is analogous to the difference between acquiring know-
ledge in the parts and the contemplation of the whole. True
knowledge is a whole, and is at rest ; consistency and universality
are the tests of truth. To this self-evidencing knowledge of the
whole the faculty of mind is supposed to correspond. But there
is a knowledge of the understanding which is incomplete and
in motion always, because unable to rest in the subordinate ideas.
Those ideas are called both images and hypotheses — images
because they are clothed in sense, hypotheses because they are
assumptions only, until they are brought into connexion with the
idea of good.
The general meaning of the passage 508-511, so far as the
thought contained in it admits of being translated into the terms of
modern philosophy, may be described or explained as follows : —
There is a truth, one and self-existent, to which by the help of
a ladder let down from above, the human intelligence may ascend.
This unity is like the sun in the heavens, the light by which
all things are seen, the being by which they are created and
sustained. It is the idea of good. And the steps of the ladder
leading up to this highest or universal existence are the mathe-
xcvi The idea of good, etc.
Republic matical sciences, which also contain in themselves an element
INTRODUC- °^ ^ universal. These, too, we see in a new manner when we
no*, connect them with the idea of good. They then cease to be
hypotheses or pictures, and become essential parts of a higher
truth which is at once their first principle and their final cause.
We cannot give any more precise meaning to this remarkable
passage, but we may trace in it several rudiments or vestiges
of thought which are common to us and to Plato : such as (i) the
unity and correlation of the sciences, or rather of science, for in
Plato's time they were not yet parted off or distinguished ; (2) the
existence of a Divine Power, or life or idea or cause or reason,
not yet conceived or no longer conceived as in the Timaeus and
elsewhere under the form of a person ; (3) the recognition of
the hypothetical and conditional character of the mathematical
sciences, and in a measure of every science when isolated from
the rest; (4) the conviction of a truth which is invisible, and
of a law, though hardly a law of nature, which permeates the
intellectual rather than the visible world.
The method of Socrates is hesitating and tentative, awaiting the
fuller explanation of the idea of good, and of the nature of dialectic
in the seventh book. The imperfect intelligence of Glaucon, and
the reluctance of Socrates to make a beginning, mark the difficulty
of the subject. The allusion to Theages' bridle, and to the
internal oracle, or demonic sign, of Socrates, which here, as
always in Plato, is only prohibitory ; the remark that the salva-
tion of any remnant of good in the present evil state of the
world is due to God only; the reference to a future state of
existence, 498 D, which is unknown to Glaucon in the tenth
book, 608 D, and in which the discussions of Socrates and his
disciples would be resumed ; the surprise in the answers at 487 E
and 497 B ; the fanciful irony of Socrates, where he pretends
that he can only describe the strange position of the philo-
sopher in a figure of speech ; the original observation that the
Sophists, after all, are only the representatives and not the
leaders of public opinion ; the picture of the philosopher standing
aside in the shower of sleet under a wall; the figure of 'the
great beast ' followed by the expression of good-will towards the
common people who would not have rejected the philosopher
if they had known him ; the 'right noble thought' that the highest
The Idea of Good. xcvii
truths demand the greatest exactness ; the hesitation of Socrates Republic
in returning once more to his well-worn theme of the idea of
t • INTRODUC-
good ; the ludicrous earnestness of Glaucon ; the comparison of «ON.
philosophy to a deserted maiden who marries beneath her — are
some of the most interesting characteristics of the sixth book.
Yet a few more words may be added, on the old theme, which
was so oft discussed in the Socratic circle, of which we, like
Glaucon and Adeimantus, would fain, if possible, have a clearer
notion. Like them, we are dissatisfied when we are told that
the idea of good can only be revealed to a student of the mathe-
matical sciences, and we are inclined to think that neither we
nor they could have been led along that path to any satisfactory
goal. For we have learned that differences of quantity cannot
pass into differences of quality, and that the mathematical sciences
can never rise above themselves into the sphere of our higher
thoughts, although they may sometimes furnish symbols and
expressions of them, and may train the mind in habits of abstrac-
tion and self-concentration. The illusion which was natural to
an ancient philosopher has ceased to be an illusion to us. But
if the process by which we are supposed to arrive at the idea
of good be really imaginary, may not the idea itself be also a
mere abstraction? We remark, first, that in all ages, and
especially in primitive philosophy, words such as being, essence,
unity, good, have exerted an extraordinary influence over the
minds of men. The meagreness or negativeness of their content
has been in an inverse ratio to their power. They have become
the forms under which all things were comprehended. There
was a need or instinct in the human soul which they satisfied;
they were not ideas, but gods, and to this new mythology the men
of a later generation began to attach the powers and associations
of the elder deities.
The idea of good is one of those sacred words or forms of
thought, which were beginning to take the place of the old
mythology. It meant unity, in which all time and all existence
were gathered up. It was the truth of all things, and also the light
in which they shone forth, and became evident to intelligences
human and divine. It was the cause of all things, the power by
which they were brought into being. It was the universal reason
divested of a human personality. It was the life as well as the
h
xcviii The Idea of Good.
Republic light of the world, all knowledge and all power were compre-
INTR<>DUC Bended *n **• The way to ^ was through the mathematical
"ON. sciences, and these too were dependent on it. To ask whether
God was the maker of it, or made by it, would be like asking
whether God could be conceived apart from goodness, or goodness
apart from God. The God of the Timaeus is not really at variance
with the idea of good ; they are aspects of the same, differing
only as the personal from the impersonal, or the masculine from
the neuter, the one being the expression or language of mythology,
the other of philosophy.
This, or something like this, is the meaning of the idea of good
as conceived by Plato. Ideas of number, order, harmony, de-
velopment may also be said to enter into it. The paraphrase
which has just been given of it goes beyond the actual words of
Plato. We have perhaps arrived at the stage of philosophy which
enables us to understand what he is aiming at, better than he did
himself. We are beginning to realize what he saw darkly and
at a distance. But if he could have been told that this, or some
conception of the same kind, but higher than this, was the truth
at which he was aiming, and the need which he sought to supply,
he would gladly have recognized that more was contained in his
own thoughts than he himself knew. As his words are few and
his manner reticent and tentative, so must the style of his inter-
preter be. We should not approach his meaning more nearly
by attempting to define it further. In translating him into the
language of modern thought, we might insensibly lose the spirit
of ancient philosophy. It is remarkable that although Plato
speaks of the idea of good as the first principle of truth and
being, it is nowhere mentioned in his writings except in this
passage. Nor did it retain any hold upon the minds of his
disciples in a later generation ; it was probably unintelligible to
them. Nor does the mention of it in Aristotle appear to have
any reference to this or any other passage in his extant writings.
ANALYSIS. BOOK VII. And now I will describe in a figure the Steph.
enlightenment or unenlightenment of our nature : — Imagine *
human beings living in an underground den which is open
towards the light ; they have been there from childhood, hav-
ing their necks and legs chained, and can only see into the den.
Analysis 514-517. xcix
At a distance there is a fire, and between the fire and the Republic
VII
prisoners a raised way, and a low wall is built along the way, ANALVS'JS
like the screen over which marionette players show their
515 puppets. Behind the wall appear moving figures, who hold in
their hands various works of art, and among them images of
men and animals, wood and stone, and some of the passers-by
are talking and others silent. ' A strange parable,' he said, ' and
strange captives.' They are ourselves, I replied ; and they see
only the shadows of the images which the fire throws on the wall
of the den ; to these they give names, and if we add an echo which
returns from the wall, the voices of the passengers will seem
to proceed from the shadows. Suppose now that you suddenly
turn them round and make them look with pain and grief to them-
selves at the real images; will they believe them to be real.?
Will not their eyes be dazzled, and will they not try to get away
from the light to something which they are able to behold without
516 blinking ? And suppose further, that they are dragged up a steep
and rugged ascent into the presence of the sun himself, will not
their sight be darkened with the excess of light ? Some time will
pass before they get the habit of perceiving at all ; and at first
they will be able to perceive only shadows and reflections in the
water ; then they will recognize the moon and the stars, and will
at length behold the sun in his own proper place as he is. Last
of all they will conclude : — This is he who gives us the year and
the seasons, and is the author of all that we see. How will they
rejoice in passing from darkness to light ! How worthless to
them will seem the honours and glories of the den ! But now
imagine further, that they descend into their old habitations ; —
in that underground dwelling they will not see as well as their
517 fellows, and will not be able to compete with them in the measure-
ment of the shadows on the wall ; there will be many jokes about
the man who went on a visit to the sun and lost his eyes, and
if they find anybody trying to set free and enlighten one of their
number, they will put him to death, if they can catch him. Now-
the cave or den is the world of sight, the fire is the sun, the way
upwards is the way to knowledge, and in the world of knowledge
the idea of good is last seen and with difficulty, but when seen
. is inferred to be the author of good and right — parent of the lord
of light in this world, and of truth and understanding in the other.
ha
: Analysis 517-520.
Republic He who attains to the beatific vision is always going upwards ;
ANALYSIS.
he is unwilling to descend into political assemblies and courts
of law ; for his eyes are apt to blink at the images or shadows
of images which they behold in them — he cannot enter into the
ideas of those who have never in their lives understood the
relation of the shadow to the substance. But blindness is of 518
two kinds, and may be caused either by passing out of darkness
into light or out of light into darkness, and a man of sense
will distinguish between them, and will not laugh equally at
both of them, but the blindness which arises from fulness of
light he will deem blessed, and pity the other; or if he laugh
at the puzzled soul looking at the sun, he will have more reason to
laugh than the inhabitants of the den at those who descend from
above. There is a further lesson taught by this parable of ours.
Some persons fancy that instruction is like giving eyes to the
blind, but we say that the faculty of sight was always there,
and that the soul only requires to be turned round towards the
light. And this is conversion ; other virtues are almost like bodily
habits, and may be acquired in the same manner, but intelligence
has a diviner life, and is indestructible, turning either to good
or evil according to the direction given. Did you never observe 519
how the mind of a clever rogue peers out of his eyes, and the
more clearly he sees, the more evil he does ? Now if you take
such an one, and cut away from him those leaden weights of
pleasure and desire which bind his soul to earth, his intelligence
will be turned round, and he will behold the truth as clearly as
he now discerns his meaner ends. And have we not decided
that our rulers must neither be so uneducated as to have no fixed
rule of life, nor so over-educated as to be unwilling to leave
their paradise for the business of the world ? We must choose
out therefore the natures who are most likely to ascend to the
light and knowledge of the good ; but we must not allow them to
remain in the region of light ; they must be forced down again
among the captives in the den to partake of their labours and
honours. ' Will they not think this a hardship ? ' You should
remember that our purpose in framing the State was not that
our citizens should do what they like, but that they should serve
the State for the common good of all. May we not fairly say 520
to our philosopher, — Friend, we do you no wrong ; for in other
Analysis 520-523. ci
States philosophy grows wild, and a wild plant owes nothing Republic
to the gardener, but you have been trained by us to be the rulers VI1'
ANALYSIS.
and kings of our hive, and therefore we must insist on your
descending into the den. You must, each of you, take your turn,
and become able to use your eyes in the dark, and with a little
practice you will see far better than those who quarrel about
the shadows, whose knowledge is a dream only, whilst yours
is a waking reality. It may be that the saint or philosopher who
is best fitted, may also be the least inclined to rule, but necessity
is laid upon him, and he must no longer live in the heaven of
|2i ideas. And this will be the salvation of the State. For those who
rule must not be those who are desirous to rule ; and, if you can
oifer to our citizens a better life than that of rulers generally is,
there will be a chance that the rich, not only in this world's goods,
but in virtue and wisdom, may bear rule. And the only life
which is better than the life of political ambition is that of philo-
sophy, which is also the best preparation for the government
of a State.
Then now comes the question, — How shall we create our rulers ;
what way is there from darkness to light ? The change is effected
by philosophy ; it is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but
the conversion of a soul from night to day, from becoming to
being. And what training will draw the soul upwards? Our
former education had two branches, gymnastic, which was
occupied with the body, and music, the sister art, which infused a
22 natural harmony into mind and literature ; but neither of these
sciences gave any promise of doing what we want. Nothing re-
mains to us but that universal or primary science of which all the
arts and sciences are partakers, I mean number or calculation.
* Very true.' Including the art of war ? * Yes, certainly.' Then
there is something ludicrous about Palamedes in the tragedy,
coming in and saying that he had invented number, and had
counted the ranks and set them in order. For if Agamemnon
could not count his feet (and without number how could he ?) he
must have been a pretty sort of general indeed. No man should
be a soldier who cannot count, and indeed he is hardly to be
called a man. But I am not speaking of these practical applica-*
23 tions of arithmetic, for number, in my view, is rather to be
regarded as a conductor to thought and being. I will explain
cii Analysis 525-526.
Republic what I mean by the last expression :— Things sensible are of two
ANALYSIS kinc^s 5 tne one class invite or stimulate the mind, while in the
other the mind acquiesces. Now the stimulating class are the
things which suggest contrast and relation. For example, suppose
that I hold up to the eyes three fingers — a fore finger, a middle
finger, a little finger — the sight equally recognizes all three
fingers, but without number cannot further distinguish them. Or
again, suppose two objects to be relatively great and small, these
ideas of greatness and smallness are supplied not by the sense,
but by the mind. And the perception of their contrast or relation 524
quickens and sets in motion the mind, which is puzzled by the
confused intimations of sense, and has recourse to number in order
to find out whether the things indicated are one or more than
one. Number replies that they are two and not one, and are to
be distinguished from one another. Again, the sight beholds
great and small, but only in a confused chaos, and not until they
are distinguished does the question arise of their respective
natures ; we are thus led on to the distinction between the visible
and intelligible. That was what I meant when I spoke of stimu-
lants to the intellect ; I was thinking of the contradictions which
arise in perception. The idea of unity, for example, like that of a
finger, does not arouse thought unless involving some conception
of plurality ; but when the one is also the opposite of one, the 525
contradiction gives rise to reflection ; an example of this is
afforded by any object of sight. All number has also an elevating
effect ; it raises the mind out of the foam and flux of generation to
the contemplation of being, having lesser military and retail uses
also. The retail use is not required by us ; but as our guardian is
to be a soldier as well as a philosopher, the military one may be
retained. And to our higher purpose no science can be better
adapted ; but it must be pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, not
of a shopkeeper. It is concerned, not with visible objects, but
with abstract truth ; for numbers are pure abstractions— the true
arithmetician indignantly denies that his unit is capable of division.
When you divide, he insists that you are only multiplying ; his 526
' one ' is not material or resolvable into fractions, but an unvarying
and absolute equality; and this proves the purely intellectual
character of his study. Note also the great power which arith-
metic has of sharpening the wits ; no other discipline is equally
Analysis 526—528. ciii
severe, or an equal test of general ability, or equally improving to Republic
a stupid person.
Let our second branch of education be geometry. * I can easily
see,' replied Glaucon, * that the skill of the general will be doubled
by his knowledge of geometry.' That is a small matter ; the use
of geometry, to which I refer, is the assistance given by it in the
contemplation of the idea of good, and the compelling the mind to
look at true being, and not at generation only. Yet the present
mode of pursuing these studies, as any one who is the least of a
mathematician is aware, is mean and ridiculous ; they are made to
look downwards to the arts, and not upwards to eternal existence.
527 The geometer is always talking of squaring, subtending, apposing,
as if he had in view action ; whereas knowledge is the real object
of the study. It should elevate the soul, and create the mind of
philosophy ; it should raise up what has fallen down, not to speak
of lesser uses in war and military tactics, and in the improvement
of the faculties.
Shall we propose, as a third branch of our education, astronomy ?
* Very good,' replied Glaucon ; ' the knowledge of the heavens is
necessary at once for husbandry, navigation, military tactics.' I
like your way of giving useful reasons for everything in order to
make friends of the world. And there is a difficulty in proving to
mankind that education is not only useful information but a
purification of the eye of the soul, which is better than the bodily
528 eye, for by this alone is truth seen. Now, will you appeal to man-
kind in general or to the philosopher ? or would you prefer to look
to yourself only? 'Every man is his own best friend.' Then
take a step backward, for we are out of order, and insert the third
dimension which is of solids, after the second which is of planes,
and then you may proceed to solids in motion. But solid geometry
is not popular and has not the patronage of the State, nor is the use
of it fully recognized ; the difficulty is great, and the votaries of the
study are conceited and impatient. Still the charm of the pursuit
wins upon men, and, if government would lend a little assistance,
there might be great progress made. ' Very true,' replied Glaucon ;
'but do I understand you now to begin with plane geometry,
and to place next geometry of solids, and thirdly, astronomy,
or the motion of solids?' Yes, I said; my hastiness has only
hindered us.
civ Analysis 528-531.
Republic ' Very good, and now let us proceed to astronomy, about which
ANALYSIS ^ am wiping to speak in your lofty strain. No one can fail to see 529
that the contemplation of the heavens draws the soul upwards.' I
am an exception, then ; astronomy as studied at present appears
to me to draw the soul not upwards, but downwards. Star-gazing
is just looking up at the ceiling — no better; a man may lie on
his back on land or on water — he may look up or look down, but
there is no science in that. The vision of knowledge of which
I speak is seen not with the eyes, but with the mind. All the
magnificence of the heavens is but the embroidery of a copy which
falls far short of the divine Original, and teaches nothing about the
absolute harmonies or motions of things. Their beauty is like the
beauty of figures drawn by the hand of Daedalus or any other
great artist, which may be used for illustration, but no mathemati- 530
cian would seek to obtain from them true conceptions of equality
or numerical relations. How ridiculous then to look for these in
the map of the heavens, in which the imperfection of matter comes
in everywhere as a disturbing element, marring the symmetry of
day and night, of months and years, of the sun and stars in their
courses. Only by problems can we place astronomy on a truly
scientific basis. Let the heavens alone, and exert the intellect.
Still, mathematics admit of other applications, as the Pytha-
goreans say, and we agree. There is a sister science of harmonical
motion, adapted to the ear as astronomy is to the eye, and there
may be other applications also. Let us inquire of the Pytha-
goreans about them, not forgetting that we have an aim higher
than theirs, which is the relation of these sciences to the idea
of good. The error which pervades astronomy also pervades
harmonics. The musicians put their ears in the place of their 531
minds. ' Yes,3 replied Glaucon, ' I like to see them laying their
ears alongside of their neighbours' faces — some saying, " That 's a
new note," others declaring that the two notes are the same.' Yes,
I said ; but you mean the empirics who are always twisting and
torturing the strings of the lyre, and quarrelling about the tempers
of the strings ; I am referring rather to the Pythagorean harmonists,
who are almost equally in error. For they investigate only the
numbers of the consonances which are heard, and ascend no
higher, — of the true numerical harmony which is unheard, and is
only to be found in problems, they have not even a conception.
Analysis 531-533- cv
'That last,' he said, 'must be a marvellous thing.' A thing, I RepiMic
replied, which is only useful if pursued with a view to the good. ANALYSIS
All these sciences are the prelude of the strain, and are profit-
able if they are regarded in their natural relations to one another.
' I dare say, Socrates,' said Glaucon ; ' but such a study will be an
endless business.' What study do you mean — of the prelude, or
what ? For all these things are only the prelude, and you surely
do not suppose that a mere mathematician is also a dialectician ?
532 ' Certainly not. I have hardly ever known a mathematician who
could reason.' And yet, Glaucon, is not true reasoning that hymn
of dialectic which is the music of the intellectual world, and which
was by us compared to the effort of sight, when from beholding
the shadows on the wall we arrived at last at the images which
gave the shadows ? Even so the dialectical faculty withdrawing
from sense arrives by the pure intellect at the contemplation of
the idea of good, and never rests but at the very end of the
intellectual world. And the royal road out of the cave into the
light, and the blinking of the eyes at the sun and turning to
contemplate the shadows of reality, not the shadows of an image
only — this progress and gradual acquisition of a new faculty of
sight by the help of the mathematical sciences, is the elevation of
the soul to the contemplation of the highest ideal of being.
' So far, I agree with you. But now, leaving the prelude, let us
proceed to the hymn. What, then, is the nature of dialectic, and
533 what are the paths which lead thither ? ' Dear Glaucon, you
cannot follow me here. There can be no revelation of the
absolute truth to one who has not been disciplined in the previous
sciences. But that there is a science of absolute truth, which
is attained in some way very different from those now practised,
I am confident. For all other arts or sciences are relative to
human needs and opinions ; and the mathematical sciences are
but a dream or hypothesis of true being, and never analyse their
own principles. Dialectic alone rises to the principle which is
above hypotheses, converting and gently leading the eye of the
soul out of the barbarous slough of ignorance into the light of the
upper world, with the help of the sciences which we have been
describing — sciences, as they are often termed, although they
require some other name, implying greater clearness than opinion
and less clearness than science, and this in our previous sketch
cvi Analysis 533-537.
Republic was understanding. And so we get four names — two for intellect,
and two for opinion, — reason or mind, understanding, faith, per-
ception of shadows — which make a proportion — being : becoming : : 534
intellect : opinion — and science : belief: : understanding : perception
of shadows. Dialectic may be further described as that science
which defines and explains the essence or being of each nature,
which distinguishes and abstracts the good, and is ready to do
battle against all opponents in the cause of good. To him who is
not a dialectician life is but a sleepy dream ; and many a man is in
his grave before he is well waked up. And would you have the
future rulers of your ideal State intelligent beings, or stupid as
posts ? ' Certainly not the latter.' Then you must train them in
dialectic, which will teach them to ask and answer questions, and
is the coping-stone of the sciences.
I dare say that you have not forgotten how our rulers were 535
chosen ; and the process of selection may be carried a step
further:— As before, they must be constant and valiant, good-
looking, and of noble manners, but now they must also have
natural ability which education will improve ; that is to say, they
must be quick at learning, capable of mental toil, retentive, solid,
diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral virtues;
not lame and one-sided, diligent in bodily exercise and indolent in
mind, or conversely ; not a maimed soul, which hates falsehood
and yet unintentionally is always wallowing in the mire of 5 36
ignorance ; not a bastard or feeble person, but sound in wind and
limb, and in perfect condition for the great gymnastic trial of the
mind. Justice herself can find no fault with natures such as these ;
and they will be the saviours of our State ; disciples of another
sort would only make philosophy more ridiculous than she is at
present. Forgive my enthusiasm ; I am becoming excited ; but
when I see her trampled under foot, I am angry at the authors of
her disgrace. ' I did not notice that you were more excited than
you ought to have been.' But I felt that I was. Now do not let
us forget another point in the selection of our disciples— that they
must be young and not old. For Solon is mistaken in saying that
an old man can be always learning ; youth is the time of study,
and here we must remember that the mind is free and dainty, and,
unlike the body, must not be made to work against the grain.
Learning should be at first a sort of play, in which the natural bent 537
Analysis 537-539. cvii
is detected. As in training them for war, the young dogs should Republic
at first only taste blood ; but when the necessary gymnastics are ANALYS'IS
over which during two or three years divide life between sleep
and bodily exercise, then the education of the soul will become a
more serious matter. At twenty years of age, a selection must be
made of the more promising disciples, with whom a new epoch of
education will begin. The sciences which they have hitherto
learned in fragments will now be brought into relation with each
other and with true being; for the power of combining them is the
test of speculative and dialectical ability. And afterwards at
thirty a further selection shall be made of those who are able to
withdraw from the world of sense into the abstraction of ideas.
But at this point, judging from present experience, there is a
danger that dialectic may be the source of many evils. The
danger may be illustrated by a parallel case : — Imagine a person
who has been brought up in wealth and luxury amid a crowd of
flatterers, and who is suddenly informed that he is a supposititious
538 son. He has hitherto honoured his reputed parents and dis-
regarded the flatterers, and now he does the reverse. This is just
what happens with a man's principles. There are certain
doctrines which he learnt at home and which exercised a parental
authority over him. Presently he finds that imputations are cast
upon them ; a troublesome querist comes and asks, * What is the
just and good ? ' or proves that virtue is vice and vice virtue, and
his mind becomes unsettled, and he ceases to love, honour, and
539 obey them as he has hitherto done. He is seduced into the life of
pleasure, and becomes a lawless person and a rogue. The case of
such speculators is very pitiable, and, in order that our thirty
years' old pupils may not require this pity, let us take every
possible care that young persons do not study philosophy too
early. For a young man is a sort of puppy who only plays with
an argument ; and is reasoned into and out of his opinions every
day ; he soon begins to believe nothing, and brings himself and
philosophy into discredit. A man of thirty does not run on in this
way; he will argue and not merely contradict, and adds new
honour to philosophy by the sobriety of his conduct. What time
shall we allow for this second gymnastic training of the soul ? —
say, twice the time required for the gymnastics of the body ; six,
or perhaps five years, to commence at thirty, and then for fifteen
cviii The Divisions of Knowledge.
Republic years let the student go down into the den, and command armies,
ANALYSIS *^ gain exPerience of life. At fifty let him return to the end of 540
all things, and have his eyes uplifted to the idea of good, and order
his life after that pattern ; if necessary, taking his turn at the
helm of State, and training up others to be his successors. When
his time comes he shall depart in peace to the islands of the
blest. He shall be honoured with sacrifices, and receive such
worship as the Pythian oracle approves.
' You are a statuary, Socrates, and have made a perfect image
of our governors.' Yes, and of our governesses, for the women
will share in all things with the men. And you will admit that
our State is not a mere aspiration, but may really come into
being when there shall arise philosopher-kings, one or more,
who will despise earthly vanities, and will be the servants of
justice only. 'And how will they begin their work?' Their 541
first act will be to send away into the country all those who are
more than ten years of age, and to proceed with those who are
left. . . .
INTRODUC- At the commencement of the sixth book, Plato anticipated
TION.
his explanation of the relation of the philosopher to the world
in an allegory, in this, as in other passages, following the order
which he prescribes in education, and proceeding from the con-
crete to the abstract. At the commencement of Book VII, under
the figure of a cave having an opening towards a fire and a
way upwards to the true light, he returns to view the divisions
of knowledge, exhibiting familiarly, as in a picture, the result
which had been hardly won by a great effort of thought in the
previous discussion ; at the same time casting a glance onward
at the dialectical process, which is represented by the way leading
from darkness to light. The shadows, the images, the reflection
of the sun and stars in the water, the stars and sun themselves,
severally correspond, — the first, to the realm of fancy and poetry,
— the second, to the world of sense, — the third, to the abstractions
or universals of sense, of which the mathematical sciences furnish
the type, — the fourth and last to the same abstractions, when seen
in the unity of the idea, from which they derive a new meaning
and power. The true dialectical process begins with the con-
templation of the real stars, and not mere reflections of them,
The growth of Abstractions. cix
and ends with the recognition of the sun, or idea of good, as the Republic
parent not only of light but of warmth and growth. To the INTROD'UC.
divisions of knowledge the stages of education partly answer : — TION-
first, there is the early education of childhood and youth in the
fancies of the poets, and in the laws and customs of the State ;—
then there is the training of the body to be a warrior athlete,
and a good servant of the mind ; — and thirdly, after an interval
follows the education of later life, which begins with mathematics
and proceeds to philosophy in general.
There seem to be two great aims in the philosophy of Plato, —
first, to realize abstractions; secondly, to connect them. Ac-
cording to him, the true education is that which draws men from
becoming to being, and to a comprehensive survey of all being.
He desires to develop in the human mind the faculty of seeing
the universal in all things ; until at last the particulars of sense
drop away and the universal alone remains. He then seeks to
combine the universals which he has disengaged from sense, not
perceiving that the correlation of them has no other basis but
the common use of language. He never understands that ab-
stractions, as Hegel says, are ' mere abstractions ' — of use when
employed in the arrangement of facts, but adding nothing to the
sum of knowledge when pursued apart from them, or with
reference to an imaginary idea of good. Still the exercise of the
faculty of abstraction apart from facts has enlarged the mind,
and played a great part in the education of the human race. Plato
appreciated the value of this faculty, and saw that it might be
quickened by the study of number and relation. All things in
which there is opposition or proportion are suggestive of re-
flection. The mere impression of sense evokes no power of
thought or of mind, but when sensible objects ask to be compared
and distinguished, then philosophy begins. The science of arith-
metic first suggests such distinctions. There follow in order the
other sciences of plain and solid geometry, and of solids in
motion, one branch of which is astronomy or the harmony of
the spheres, — to this is appended the sister science of the har-
mony of sounds. Plato seems also to hint at the possibility of
other applications of arithmetical or mathematical proportions,
such as we employ in chemistry and natural philosophy, such
as the Pythagoreans and even Aristotle make use of in Ethics
ex A priori Astronomy.
Republic and Politics, e.g. his distinction between arithmetical and geo-
INTRODUC- metr^ca^ proportion in the Ethics (Book V), or between numerical
TION. ancj proportional equality in the Politics (iii. 8, iv. 12, &c.).
The modern mathematician will readily sympathise with Plato's
delight in the properties of pure mathematics. He will not be
disinclined to say with him :— Let alone the heavens, and study
the beauties of number and figure in themselves. He too will
be apt to depreciate their application to the arts. He will observe
that Plato has a conception of geometry, in which figures are to
be dispensed with ; thus in a distant and shadowy way seeming
to anticipate the possibility of working geometrical problems by
a more general mode of analysis. He will remark with interest
on the backward state of solid geometry, which, alas ! was not
encouraged by the aid of the State in the age of Plato ; and he
will recognize the grasp of Plato's mind in his ability to conceive
of one science of solids in motion including the earth as well
as the heavens, — not forgetting to notice the intimation to which
allusion has been already made, that besides astronomy and
harmonics the science of solids in motion may have other appli-
cations. Still more will he be struck with the comprehensiveness
of view which led Plato, at a time when these sciences hardly
existed, to say that they must be studied in relation to one
another, and to the idea of good, or common principle of truth
and being. But he will also see (and perhaps without surprise)
that in that stage of physical and mathematical knowledge, Plato
has fallen into the error of supposing that he can construct the
heavens a priori by mathematical problems, and determine the
principles of harmony irrespective of the adaptation of sounds to
the human ear. The illusion was a natural one in that age and
country. The simplicity and certainty of astronomy and har-
monics seemed to contrast with the variation and complexity
of the world of sense ; hence the circumstance that there was
some elementary basis of fact, some measurement of distance
or time or vibrations on which they must ultimately rest, was
overlooked by him. The modern predecessors of Newton fell
into errors equally great ; and Plato can hardly be said to have
.been very far wrong, or may even claim a sort of prophetic
insight into the subject, when we consider that the greater part
of astronomy at the present day consists of abstract dynamics,
Mystical applications of Mathematics. cxi
by the help of which most astronomical discoveries have been Republic
made. , "»•
INTHODUC-
The metaphysical philosopher from his point of view recognizes ™>N.
mathematics as an instrument of education, — which strengthens
the power of attention, developes the sense of order and the
faculty of construction, and enables the mind to grasp under
simple formulae the quantitative differences of physical phe-
nomena. But while acknowledging their value in education, he
sees also that they have no connexion with our higher moral
and intellectual ideas. In the attempt which Plato makes to
connect them, we easily trace the influences of ancient Pytha-
gorean notions. There is no reason to suppose that he is speak-
ing of the ideal numbers at p. 525 E ; but he is describing numbers
which are pure abstractions, to which he assigns a real and
separate existence, which, as ' the teachers of the art ' (meaning
probably the Pythagoreans) would have affirmed, repel all at-
tempts at subdivision, and in which unity and every other number
are conceived of as absolute. The truth and certainty of numbers,
when thus disengaged from phenomena, gave them a kind of
sacredness in the eyes of an ancient philosopher. Nor is it easy
to say how far ideas of order and fixedness may have had a moral
and elevating influence on the minds of men, * who,' in the words
of the Timaeus, 'might learn to regulate their erring lives ac-
cording to them' (47 C). It is worthy of remark that the old
Pythagorean ethical symbols still exist as figures of speech among
ourselves. And those who in modern times see the world per-
vaded by universal law, may also see an anticipation of this last
word of modern philosophy in the Platonic idea of good, which
is the source and measure of all things, and yet only an abstrac-
tion. (Cp. Philebus, sub fin.)
Two passages seem to require more particular explanations.
First, that which relates to the analysis of vision. The difficulty
in this passage may be explained, like many others, from dif-
ferences in the modes of conception prevailing among ancient
and modern thinkers. To us, the perceptions of sense are in-
separable from the act of the mind which accompanies them.
The consciousness of form, colour, distance, is indistinguishable
from the simple sensation, which is the medium of them.
Whereas to Plato sense is the Heraclitean flux of sense, not
cxii A priori Harmonics.
Republic the vision of objects in the order in which they actually present
INTRODUC- tnemselves to the experienced sight, but as they may be imagined
TION. fO appear confused and blurred to the half-awakened eye of the
infant. The first action of the mind is aroused by the attempt
to set in order this chaos, and the reason is required to frame
distinct conceptions under which the confused impressions of
sense may be arranged. Hence arises the question, * What is
great, what is small ?' and thus begins the distinction of the visible
and the intelligible.
The second difficulty relates to Plato's conception of harmonics.
Three classes of harmonists are distinguished by him : — first, the
Pythagoreans, whom he proposes to consult as in the previous
discussion on music he was to consult Damon — they are acknow-
ledged to be masters in the art, but are altogether deficient
in the knowledge of its higher import and relation to the good ;
secondly, the mere empirics, whom Glaucon appears to confuse
with them, and whom both he and Socrates .ludicrously describe
as experimenting by mere auscultation on the intervals of sounds.
Both of these fall short in different degrees of the Platonic idea
of harmony, which must be studied in a purely abstract way, first
by the method of problems, and secondly as a part of universal
knowledge in relation to the idea of good.
. The allegory has a political as well as a philosophical meaning.
The den or cave represents the narrow sphere of politics or law
(cp. the description of the philosopher and lawyer in the Theae-
tetus, 172-176), and the light of the eternal ideas is supposed to
exercise a disturbing influence on the minds of those who return
to this lower world. In other words, their principles are too
wide for practical application ; they are looking far away into
the past and future, when their business is with the present.
The ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions of actual life,
and may often be at variance with them. And at first, those
who return are unable to compete with the inhabitants of the
den in the measurement of the shadows, and are derided and
persecuted by them ; but after a while they see the things below
in far truer proportions than those who have never ascended
into the upper world. The difference between the politician
turned into a philosopher and the philosopher turned into a
politician, is symbolized by the two kinds of disordered eyesight,
T1ON.
The effects of Political Ideals. cxiii
the one which is experienced by the captive who is transferred Republic
from darkness to day, the other, of the heavenly messenger who INTROD^.C.
voluntarily for the good of his fellow-men descends into the den.
In what way the brighter light is to dawn on the inhabitants
of the lower world, or how the idea of good is to become
the guiding principle of politics, is left unexplained by Plato.
Like the nature and divisions of dialectic, of which Glaucon
impatiently demands to be informed, perhaps he would have
said that the explanation could not be given except to a disciple ^
of the previous sciences. (Compare Symposium 210 A.)
Many illustrations of this part of the Republic may be found in
modern Politics and in daily life. For among ourselves, too,
there have been two sorts of Politicians or Statesmen, whose
eyesight has become disordered in two different ways. First,
there have been great men who, in the language of Burke, * have
been too much given to general maxims,' who, like J. S. Mill
or Burke himself, have been theorists or philosophers before they
were politicians, or who, having been students of history, have
allowed some great historical parallel, such as the English Revo-
lution of 1688, or possibly Athenian democracy or Roman
Imperialism, to be the medium through which they viewed
contemporary events. Or perhaps the long projecting shadow
of some existing institution may have darkened their vision. The
Church of the future, the Commonwealth of the future, the Society
of the future, have so absorbed their minds, that they are unable
to see in their true proportions the Politics of to-day. They
have been intoxicated with great ideas, such as liberty, or
equality, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or
the brotherhood of humanity, and they no longer care to consider
how these ideas must be limited in practice or harmonized with
the conditions of human life. They are full of light, but the light
to them has become only a sort of luminous mist or blindness.
Almost every one has known some enthusiastic half-educated
person, who sees everything at false distances, and in erroneous
proportions.
With this disorder of eyesight may be contrasted another—
of those who see not far into the distance, but what is near only ;
who have been engaged all their lives in a trade or a profession ;
who are limited to a set or sect of their own. Men of this kind
cxiv The dangers which beset youth
Republic have no universal except their own interests or the interests
of their class, no principle but the opinion of persons like them-
selves, no knowledge of affairs beyond what they pick up in
the streets or at their club. Suppose them to be sent into a
larger world, to undertake some higher calling, from being
tradesmen to turn generals or politicians, from being school-
masters to become philosophers : — or imagine them on a sudden
to receive an inward light which reveals to them for the first
time in their lives a higher idea of God and the existence of a
spiritual world, by this sudden conversion or change is not their
daily life likely to be upset ; and on the other hand will not many
of their old prejudices and narrownesses still adhere to them
long after they have begun to take a more comprehensive view
of human things? From familiar examples like these we may
learn what Plato meant by the eyesight which is liable to two
kinds of disorders.
Nor have we any difficulty in drawing a parallel between the
young Athenian in the fifth century before Christ who became
unsettled by new ideas, and the student of a modern University
who has been the subject of a similar ' aufklarung.' We too
observe that when young men begin to criticise customary beliefs,
or to analyse the constitution of human nature, they are apt to
lose hold of solid principle (dnav TO fifftaiov avrav e'£ot'xcrat). They
are like trees which have been frequently transplanted. The
earth about them is loose, and they have no roots reaching far
into the soil. They Might upon every flower,' following their
own wayward wills, or because the wind blows them. They
catch opinions, as diseases are caught— when they are in the
air. Borne hither and thither, 'they speedily fall into beliefs'
the opposite of those in which they were brought up. They
hardly retain the distinction of right and wrong ; they seem to think
one thing as good as another. They suppose themselves to be
searching after truth when they are playing the game of ' follow my
leader.* They fall in love ' at first sight ' with paradoxes respecting
morality, some fancy about art, some novelty or eccentricity in
religion, and like lovers they are so absorbed for a time in their
new notion that they can think of nothing else. The resolution of
some philosophical or theological question seems to them more
interesting and important than any substantial knowledge of
in times of transition. cxv
literature or science or even than a good life. Like the youth Republic
in the Philebus, they are ready to discourse to any one about a INTROD"UC.
new philosophy. They are generally the disciples of some TION>
eminent professor or sophist, whom they rather imitate than
understand. They may be counted happy if in later years they
retain some of the simple truths which they acquired in early
education, and which they may, perhaps, find to be worth all
the rest. Such is the picture which Plato draws and which we
only reproduce, partly in his own words, of the dangers which
beset youth in times of transition, when old opinions are fading
away and the new are not yet firmly established. Their condition
is ingeniously compared by him to that of a supposititious son,
who has made the discovery that his reputed parents are not
his real ones, and, in consequence, they have lost their authority
over him.
The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician
is also noticeable. Plato is very well aware that the faculty of
the mathematician is quite distinct from the higher philosophical
sense which recognizes and combines first principles (531 E).
The contempt which he expresses at p. 533 for distinctions of
words, the danger of involuntary falsehood, the apology which
Socrates makes for his earnestness of speech, are highly charac-
teristic of the Platonic style and mode of thought. The quaint
notion that if Palamedes was the inventor of number Agamemnon
could not have counted his feet ; the art by which we are made to
believe that this State of ours is not a dream only ; the gravity
with which the first step is taken in the actual creation of the
State, namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived
at ten years of age, in order to expedite the business of education
by a generation, are also truly Platonic. (For the last, compare
the passage at the end of the third book (415 D), in which he
expects the lie about the earthborn men to be believed in the
second generation.)
eph. BOOK VTII. And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that ANALYSIS.
* in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common ; and
the education and pursuits of men and women, both in war and
peace, are to be common, and kings are to be philosophers an<J
warriors, and the soldiers of the State are to live together,
i 2
cxvi Analysis 543-546.
Republic having all things in common ; and they are to be warrior athletes,
AN ' receiving no pay but only their food, from the other citizens.
Now let us return to the point at which we digressed. ' That is
easily done,' he replied : ' You were speaking of the State which
you had constructed, and of the individual who answered to this,
both of whom you affirmed to be good ; and you said that of 544
inferior States there were four forms and four individuals cor-
responding to them, which although deficient in various degrees,
were all of them worth inspecting with a view to determining
the relative happiness or misery of the best or worst man. Then
Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted you, and this led to
another argument, — and so here we are.' Suppose that we put
ourselves again in the same position, and do you repeat your
question. * I should like to know of what constitutions you were
speaking?' Besides the perfect State there are only four of
any note in Hellas :— first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan
commonwealth ; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils ; thirdly,
democracy, which follows next in order ; fourthly, tyranny, which
is the disease or death of all government. Now, States are not
made of ' oak and rock,' but of flesh and blood ; and therefore as
there are five States there must be five human natures in in-
dividuals, which correspond to them. And first, there is the
ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian State; 545
secondly, the oligarchical nature ; thirdly, the democratical ; and
fourthly, the tyrannical. This last will have to be compared with
the perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is
the happier, and then we shall be able to determine whether
the argument of Thrasymachus or our own is the more convincing.
And as before we began with the State and went on to the
individual, so now, beginning with timocracy, let us go on to
the timocratical man, and then proceed to the other forms of
government, and the individuals who answer to them.
But how did timocracy arise out of the perfect State ? Plainly,
like all changes of government, from division in the rulers. But
whence came division ? * Sing, heavenly Muses,' as Homer says ;
—let them condescend to answer us, as if we were children, to
whom they put on a solemn face in jest. * And what will they
say ? ' They will say that human things are fated to decay, and 546
even the perfect State will not escape from this law of destiny,
Analysis 546-548. cxvii
when ' the wheel comes full circle ' in a period short or long. Plants Republic
or animals have times of fertility and sterility, which the intel- ANALVSJS
ligence of rulers because alloyed by sense will not enable them to
ascertain, and children will be born out of season. For whereas
divine creations are in a perfect cycle or number, the human
creation is in a number which declines from perfection, and has
four terms' and three intervals of numbers, increasing, waning,
assimilating, dissimilating, and yet perfectly commensurate with
each other. - The base of the number with a fourth added (or
which is 3 : 4), multiplied by five and cubed, gives two har-
monies : — The first a square number, which is a hundred times
the base (or a hundred times a hundred) ; the second, an oblong,
being a hundred squares of the rational diameter of a figure the
side of which is five, subtracting one from each square or two .
perfect squares from all, and adding a hundred cubes of three.
This entire number is geometrical and contains the rule or law of
generation. When this law is neglected marriages will be un-
propitious ; the inferior offspring who are then born will in time
become the rulers ; the State will decline, and education fall into
decay ; gymnastic will be preferred to music, and the gold and
547 silver and brass and iron will form a chaotic mass — thus division
will arise. Such is the Muses' answer to our question. 'And
a true answer, of course : — but what more have they to say ? '
They say that the two races, the iron and brass, and the silver and
gold, will draw the State different ways; — the one will take to
trade and moneymaking, and the others, having the true riches
and not caring for money, will resist them : the contest will end
in a compromise ; they will agree to have private property, and
will enslave their fellow-citizens who were once their friends
and nurturers. But they will retain their warlike character, and
will be chiefly occupied in fighting and exercising rule. Thus
arises timocracy, which is intermediate between aristocracy and
oligarchy.
The new form of government resembles the ideal in obedience
to rulers and contempt for trade, in having common meals, and in
devotion to warlike and gymnastic exercises. But corruption has
crept into philosophy, and simplicity of character, which was once
548 her note, is now looked for only in the military class. Arts of war
begin to prevail over arts of peace; the ruler is no longer a
cxviii Analysis 548-551.
Republic philosopher; as in oligarchies, there springs up among them
an extravaSant l°ve °f gain— get another man's and save your
own, is their principle ; and they have dark places in which they
hoard their gold and silver, for the use of their women and others ;
they take their pleasures by stealth^ like boys who are running
away from their father— the law; and their education is not
inspired by the Muse, but imposed by the strong arm of power.
The leading characteristic of this State is party spirit and
ambition.
And what manner of man answers to such a State ? * In love
of contention,' replied Adeimantus, 'he will be like our friend
Glaucon.' In that respect, perhaps, but not in others. He
is self- asserting and ill-educated, yet fond of literature, al- 549
though not himself a speaker, — fierce with slaves, but obedient
to rulers, a lover of power and honour, which he hopes to
gain by deeds of arms, — fond, too, of gymnastics and of hunting.
As he advances in years he grows avaricious, for he has lost
philosophy, which is the only saviour and guardian of men. His
origin is as follows: — His father is a good man dwelling in an
ill-ordered State, who has retired from politics in order that he
may lead a quiet life. His mother is angry at her loss of prece-
dence among other women ; she is disgusted at her husband's
selfishness, and she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness
and indolence of his father. The old family servant takes up
the tale, and says to the youth : — ' When you grow up you must be
more of a man than your father.' All the world are agreed that 550
he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a busybody is
highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this
spirit with his father's words and ways, and as he is naturally
well disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he
rests at a middle point and becomes ambitious and a lover of
honour.
And now let us set another city over against another man.
The next form of government is oligarchy, in which the rule
is of the rich only ; nor is it difficult to see how such a State
arises. The decline begins with the possession of gold and silver ;
illegal modes of expenditure are invented ; one draws another
on, and the multitude are infected; riches outweigh virtue;
lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour; misers of 551
Analysis 551-553. cxix
politicians ; and, in time, political privileges are confined by law Republic
to the rich, who do not shrink from violence in order to effect
ANALYSIS.
their purposes.
Thus much of the origin,— let us next consider the evils of
oligarchy. Would a man who wanted to be safe on a voyage take
a bad pilot because he was rich, or refuse a good one because
he was poor? And does not the analogy apply still more to
the State ? And there are yet greater evils : two nations are
struggling together in one— the rich and the poor ; and the rich
- dare not put arms into the hands of the poor, and are unwilling to
pay for defenders out of their own money. And have we not
552 already condemned that State in which the same persons are
warriors as well as shopkeepers ? The greatest evil of all is that
a man may sell his property and have no place in the State ;
while there is one class which has enormous wealth, the other
is entirely destitute. But observe that these destitutes had not
really any more of the governing nature in them when they were
rich than now that they are poor; they were miserable spend-
thrifts always. They are the drones of the hive; only whereas
the actual drone is unprovided by nature with a sting, the two-
legged things whom we call drones are some of them without stings
and some of them have dreadful stings ; in other words, there
are paupers and there are rogues. These are never far apart ;
and in oligarchical cities, where nearly everybody is a pauper
who is not a ruler, you will find abundance of both. And
this evil state of society originates in bad education and bad
government.
553 Like State, like man,— the change in the latter begins with the
representative of timocracy ; he walks at first in the ways of his
father, who may have been a statesman, or general, perhaps;
and presently he sees him ' fallen from his high estate,' the victim
of informers, dying in prison or exile, or by the hand of the
executioner. The lesson which he thus receives, makes him
cautious ; he leaves politics, represses his pride, and saves pence.
Avarice is enthroned as his bosom's lord, and assumes the style
of the Great King ; the rational and spirited elements sit humbly
on the ground at either side, the one immersed in calculation, the
other absorbed in the admiration of wealth. The love of honour
turns to love of money; the conversion is instantaneous. The
cxx Analysis 554-557.
Republic man is mean, saving, toiling, the slave of one passion which is 554
ANALYSIS.
VIH- the master of the rest : Is he not the very image of the State ?
He has had no education, or he would never have allowed the
blind god of riches to lead the dance within him. And being
uneducated he will have many slavish desires, some beggarly,
some knavish, breeding in his soul. If he is the trustee of an
orphan, and has the power to defraud, he will soon prove that he
is not without the will, and that his passions are only restrained
by fear and not by reason. Hence he leads a divided existence ;
in which the better desires mostly prevail. But when he is con- 555
tending for prizes and other distinctions, he is afraid to incur a loss
which is to be repaid only by barren honour ; in time of war he
fights with a small part of his resources, and usually keeps his
money and loses the victory.
Next comes democracy and the democratic man, out of oli-
garchy and the oligarchical man. Insatiable avarice is the ruling
passion of an oligarchy ; and they encourage expensive habits in
order that they may gain by the ruin of extravagant youth. Thus
men of family often lose their property or rights of citizenship ;
but they remain in the city, full of hatred against the new owners
of their estates and ripe for revolution. The usurer with stooping
walk pretends not to see them ; he passes by, and leaves his
sting — that is, his money — in some other victim ; and many a
man has to pay the parent or principal sum multiplied into a
family of children, and is reduced into a state of dronage by him. 556
The only way of diminishing the evil is either to limit a man in
his use of his property, or to insist that he shall lend at his own
risk. But the ruling class do not want remedies ; they care
only for money, and are as careless of virtue as the poorest of the
citizens. Now there are occasions on which the governors and
the governed meet together, — at festivals, on a journey, voyaging
or fighting. The sturdy pauper finds that in the hour of danger
he is not despised ; he sees the rich man puffing and panting,
and draws tlie conclusion which he privately imparts to his com-
panions,— ' that our people are not good for much ; ' and as a
sickly frame is made ill by a mere touch from without, or some-
times without external impulse is ready to fall to pieces of itself,
so from the least cause, or with none at all, the city falls ill and
fights a battle for life or death. And democracy comes into 557
Analysis 557-559-
CXXl
power when the poor are the victors, killing some and exiling
some, and giving equal shares in the government to all the rest.
The manner of life in such a State is that of democrats ; there
is freedom and plainness of speech, and every man does what
is right in his own eyes,* and has his own way of life. Hence
arise the most various developments of character ; the State is
like a piece of embroidery of which the colours and figures are
the manners of men, and there are many who, like women and
children, prefer this variety to real beauty and excellence. The
State is not one but many, like a bazaar at which you can buy
anything. The great charm is, that you may do as you like ;
you may govern if you like, let it alone if you like ; go to war
558 and make peace if you feel disposed, and all quite irrespective
of anybody else. When you condemn men to death they remain
alive all the same ; a gentleman is desired to go into exile,
and he stalks about the streets like a hero; and nobody sees
him or cares for him. Observe, too, how grandly Democracy
sets her foot upon all our fine theories of education, — how little
she cares for the training of her statesmen ! The only quali-
fication which she demands is the profession of patriotism. Such
is democracy ;— a pleasing, lawless, various sort of government,
distributing equality to equals and unequals alike. ,
Let us now inspect the individual democrat ; and first, as in
the case of the State, we will trace his antecedents. He is the
son of a miserly oligarch, and has been taught by him to restrain
the love of unnecessary pleasures. Perhaps I ought to explain
559 this latter term : — Necessary pleasures are those which are
good, and which we cannot do without; unnecessary pleasures
are those which do no good, and of which the desire might
be eradicated by early training. For example, the pleasures
of eating and drinking are necessary and healthy, up to a certain
point ; beyond that point they are alike hurtful to body and
mind, and the excess may be avoided. When in excess, they
may be rightly called expensive pleasures, in opposition to the
useful ones. And the drone, as we called him, is the slave of
these unnecessary pleasures and desires, whereas the miserly
oligarch is subject only to the necessary.
The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following
manner: — The youth who has had a miserly bringing up, gets
Rfptiblic
VIII.
ANALYSIS.
cxxii Analysis 559-562.
Republic a taste of the drone's honey; he meets with wild companions,
ANALYSIS w^° mtro(^uce mm to every new pleasure. As in the State, so
in the individual, there are allies on both sides, temptations from
without and passions from within ; there is reason also and
external influences of parents and friends in alliance with the
oligarchical principle ; and the two factions are in violent conflict 560
with one another. Sometimes the party of order prevails, but
then again new desires and new disorders arise, and the whole
mob of passions gets possession of the Acropolis, that is to say,
the soul, which they find void and unguarded by true words
and works. Falsehoods and illusions ascend to take their place ;
the prodigal goes back into the country of the Lotophagi or
drones, and openly dwells there. And if any offer of alliance
or parley of individual elders comes from home, the false spirits
shut the gates of the castle and permit no one to enter, — there
is a battle, and they gain the victory ; and straightway making
alliance with the desires, they banish modesty, which they call
folly, and send temperance over the border. When the house
has been swept and garnished, they dress up the exiled vices, and,
crowning them with garlands, bring them back under new names.
Insolence they call good breeding, anarchy freedom, waste mag-
nificence, impudence courage. Such is the process by which the 561
youth passes from the necessary pleasures to the unnecessary.
After a while he divides his time impartially between them ; and
perhaps, when he gets older and the violence of passion has
abated, he restores some of the exiles and lives in a sort of equi-
librium, indulging first one pleasure and then another; and if
reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good and
honourable, and others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says
that he can make no distinction between them. Thus he lives
in the fancy of the hour ; sometimes he takes to drink, and then
he turns abstainer ; he practises in the gymnasium or he does
nothing at all; then again he would be a philosopher or a
politician ; or again, he would be a warrior or a man of business ;
he is
'Every thing by starts and nothing long.'
There remains still the finest and fairest of all men and all 562
States— tyranny and the tyrant. Tyranny springs from de-
mocracy much as democracy springs from oligarchy. Both arise
Analysis 562-564. cxxiii
from excess; the one from excess of wealth, the other from Republic
excess of freedom. 'The great natural good of life,' says the
democrat, ' is freedom.' And this exclusive love of freedom and
regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the change
from democracy to tyranny. The State demands the strong
wine of freedom, and unless her rulers give her a plentiful
draught, punishes and insults them ; equality and fraternity of
governors and governed is the approved principle. Anarchy is
the law, not of the State only, but of private houses, and extends
563 even to the animals. Father and son, citizen and foreigner, teacher
and pupil, old and young, are all on a level ; fathers and teachers
fear their sons and pupils, and the wisdom of the young man
is a match for the elder, and the old imitate the jaunty manners
of the young because they are afraid of being thought morose.
Slaves are on a level with their masters and mistresses, and
there is no difference between men and women. Nay, the very
animals in a democratic State have a freedom which is unknown
in other places. The she-dogs are as good as their she-mistresses,
and horses and asses march along with dignity and run their
noses against anybody who comes in their way. ' That has often
been my experience.' At last the citizens become so sensitive
that they cannot endure the yoke of laws, written or unwritten ;
they would have no man call himself their master. Such is
the glorious beginning of things out of which tyranny springs.
* Glorious, indeed ; but what is to follow ? ' The ruin of oligarchy
564 is the ruin of democracy ; for there is a law of contraries ; the
excess of freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and the
greater the freedom the greater the slavery. You will remember
that in the oligarchy were found two classes— rogues and paupers,
whom we compared to drones with and without stings. These
two classes are to the State what phlegm and bile are to the
human body; and the State-physician, or legislator, must get
rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of the
hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are
more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy;
there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life
and animation ; and the keener sort speak and act, while the
others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from
being heard. And there is another class in democratic States,
cxxiv Analysis 564-567.
Republic of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when
. ' the drones have need of their possessions ; there is more- 565
ANALYSIS.
over a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and
they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet,
they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together un-
less they are attracted by a little honey ; and the rich are
made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the
greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob. Their
victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings
of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence.
Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The
people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness,
and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of
the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus
Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up
with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf. Even so
the protector, who tastes human blood, and. slays some and
exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of
debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a 566
wolf— that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon
comes back from exile ; and then if his enemies cannot get rid
of him by lawful means, they plot his assassination. Thereupon
the friend of the people makes his well-known request to them
for a body-guard, which they readily grant, thinking only of his
danger and not of their own. Now let the rich man make to
himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not
do so then. And the Great Protector, having crushed all his
rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown
tyrant : Let us enquire into the nature of his happiness.
In the early days of his tyranny he smiles and beams upon
everybody ; he is not a ' dominus,' no, not he : he has only come
to put an end to debt and the monopoly of land. Having got rid
of foreign enemies, he makes himself necessary to the State by 567
always going to war. He is thus enabled to depress the poor
by heavy taxes, and so keep them at work ; and he can get rid
of bolder spirits by handing them over to the enemy. Then
comes unpopularity ; some of his old associates have the courage
to oppose him. The consequence is, that he has to make a
purgation of the State; but, unlike the physician who purges
Analysis 567-569. cxxv
away the bad, he must get rid of the high-spirited, the wise and Republic
the wealthy; for he has no choice between death and a life of '
ANALYSIS.
shame and dishonour. And the more hated he is, the more he
will require trusty guards ; but how will he obtain them ? * They
will come flocking like birds — for pay.' Will he not rather obtain
them on the spot? He will take the slaves from their owners
568 and make them his body-guard ; these are his trusted friends,
who admire and look up to him. Are not the tragic poets wise
who magnify and exalt the tyrant, and say that he is wise by
association with the wise ? And are not their praises of tyranny
alone a sufficient reason why we should exclude them from our
State ? They may go to other cities, and gather the mob about
them with fine words, and change commonwealths into tyrannies
and democracies, receiving honours and rewards for their
services ; but the higher they and their friends ascend constitution
hill, the more their honour will fail and become 'too asthmatic
to mount.' To return to the tyrant — How will he support that
rare army of his ? First, by robbing the temples of their treasures,
which will enable him to lighten the taxes; then he will take
all his father's property, and spend it on his companions, male
or female. Now his father is the demus, and if the demus gets
569 angry, and says that a great hulking son ought not to be a burden
on his parents, and bids him and his riotous crew begone, then
will the parent know what a monster he has been nurturing,
and that the son whom he would fain expel is too strong for
him. 'You do not mean to say that he will beat his father?'
Yes, he will, after having taken away his arms. 'Then he is
a parricide and a cruel, unnatural son.' And the people have
jumped from the fear of slavery into slavery, out of the smoke
into the fire. Thus liberty, when out of all order and reason,
passes into the worst form of servitude. . . .
In the previous books Plato has described the ideal State ; now INTRODUC-
he returns to the perverted or declining forms, on which he
had lightly touched at the end of Book iv. These he describes in
a succession of parallels between the individuals and the States,
tracing the origin of either in the State or individual which has
preceded them. He begins by asking the point at which he
digressed; and is thus led shortly to recapitulate the substance
cxxvi The order of decline in States
Republic of the three former books, which also contain a parallel of the
VIIL philosopher and the State.
INTRODUC- < k
•HON. Of the first decline he gives no intelligible account ; he would
not have liked to admit the most probable causes of the fall of his
ideal State, which to us would appear to be the impracticability of
communism or the natural antagonism of the ruling and subject
classes. He throws a veil of mystery over the origin of the
decline, which he attributes to ignorance of the law of population.
Of this law the famous geometrical figure or number is the
expression. Like the ancients in general, he had no idea of the
gradual perfectibility of man or of the education of the human
race. His ideal was not to be attained in the course of ages,
but was to spring in full armour from the head of the legislator.
When good laws had been given, he thought only of the manner
in which they were likely to be corrupted, or of how they might
be filled up in detail or restored in accordance with their original
spirit. He appears not to have reflected upon the full meaning of
his own words, ' In the brief space of human life, nothing great
can be accomplished ' (x. 608 B) ; or again, as he afterwards says
in the Laws (iii. 676), * Infinite time is the maker of cities.' The
order of constitutions which is adopted by him represents an
order of thought rather than a succession of time, and may be
considered as the first attempt to frame a philosophy of history.
The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the govern-
ment of soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the
Spartan State ; this is a government of force, in which education
is not inspired by the Muses, but imposed by the law, and in
which all the finer elements of organization have disappeared.
The philosopher himself has lost the love of truth, and the soldier,
who is of a simpler and honester nature, rules in his stead. The
individual who answers to timocracy has some noticeable qualities.
He is described as ill educated, but, like the Spartan, a lover of
literature ; and although he is a harsh master to his servants he
has no natural superiority over them. His character is based
upon a reaction against the circumstances of his father, who in
a troubled city has retired from politics; and his mother, who
is dissatisfied at her own position, is always urging him towards
the life of political ambition. Such a character may have had
this origin, and indeed Livy attributes the Licinian laws to a •
not historical but imaginary. cxxvii
feminine jealousy of a similar kind (vii. 34). But there is obviously Republic
no connection between the manner in which the timocratic State T
INTRODUC-
springs out of the ideal, and the mere accident by which the TION.
timocratic man is the son of a retired statesman.
The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even
less historical foundation. For there is no trace in Greek history
of a polity like the Spartan or Cretan passing into an oligarchy of
wealth, or of the oligarchy of wealth passing into a democracy.
The order of history appears to be different ; first, in the Homeric
times there is the royal or patriarchal form of government, which
a century or two later was succeeded by an oligarchy of birth
rather than of wealth, and in which wealth was only the accident
of the hereditary possession of land and power. Sometimes this
oligarchical government gave way to a government based upon a
qualification of property, which, according to Aristotle's mode of
using words, would have been called a timocracy ; and this in
some cities, as at Athens, became the conducting medium to
democracy. But such was not the necessary order of succession
in States ; nor, indeed, can any order be discerned in the endless
fluctuation of Greek history (like the tides in the Euripus), except,
perhaps, in the almost uniform tendency from monarchy to
aristocracy in the earliest times. At first sight there appears to
be a similar inversion in the last step of the Platonic succession ;
for tyranny, instead of being the natural end of democracy, in
early Greek history appears rather as a stage leading to de-
mocracy; the reign of Peisistratus and his sons is an episode
which comes between the legislation of Solon and the constitution
of Cleisthenes ; and some secret cause common to them all seems
to have led the greater part of Hellas at her first appearance in
the dawn of history, e.g. Athens, Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, and
nearly every State with the exception of Sparta, through a similar
stage of tyranny which ended either in oligarchy or democracy.
But then we must remember that Plato is describing rather the
contemporary governments of the Sicilian States, which alternated
between democracy and tyranny, than the ancient history of
Athens or Corinth.
The portrait of the tyrant himself is just such as the later Greek
delighted to draw of Phalaris and Dionysius, in which, as in the
lives of mediaeval saints or mythic heroes, the conduct and actions
cxxviii The exaggeration of Tyranny and Democracy.
Republic of one were attributed to another in order to fill up the outline.
VIII. There was no enormity which the Greek was not ready to believe
INTRODUC-
TION, of them ; the tyrant was the negation of government and law ; his
assassination was glorious; there was no crime, however un-
natural, which might not with probability be attributed to him.
In this, Plato was only following the common thought of his
countrymen, which he embellished and exaggerated with all
the power of his genius. There is no need to suppose that he
drew from life ; or that his knowledge of tyrants is derived from a
personal acquaintance with Dionysius. The manner in which
he speaks of them would rather tend to render doubtful his ever
having ' consorted ' with them, or entertained the schemes, which
are attributed to him in the Epistles, of regenerating Sicily by
their help.
Plato in a hyperbolical and serio-comic vein exaggerates the
follies of democracy which he also sees reflected in social life.
To him democracy is a state of individualism or dissolution ;
in which every one is doing what is right in his own eyes. Of
a people animated by a common spirit of liberty, rising as one
man to repel the Persian host, which is the leading idea of
democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems to
think. But il he is not a believer in liberty, still less is he a lover
of tyranny. His deeper and more serious condemnation is re-
served for the tyrant, who is the ideal of wickedness and also
of weakness, and who in his utter helplessness and suspiciousness
is leading an almost impossible existence, without that remnant of
good which, in Plato's opinion, was required to give power to
evil (Book i. p. 352). This ideal of wickedness living in helpless
misery, is the reverse of that other portrait of perfect injustice
ruling in happiness and splendour, which first of all Thrasy-
machus, and afterwards the sons of Ariston had drawn, and
is also the reverse of the king whose rule of life is the good of
his subjects.
Each of these governments and individuals has a corresponding
ethical gradation : the ideal State is under the rule of reason, not
extinguishing but harmonizing the passions, and training them
in virtue ; in the timocracy and the timocratic man the constitu-
tion, whether of the State or of the individual, is based, first, upon
courage, and secondly, upon the love of honour ; this latter virtue,
Free use of metaphor in Plato. cxxix
which is hardly to be esteemed a virtue, has superseded all the Republic
rest. In the second stage of decline the virtues have altogether INTROD '
disappeared, and the love of gain has succeeded to them ; in the TION-
third stage, or democracy, the various passions are allowed to
have free play, and the virtues and vices are impartially culti-
vated. But this freedom, which leads to many curious extrava-
gances of character, is in reality only a state of weakness and
dissipation. At last, one monster passion takes possession of the
whole nature of man — this is tyranny. In all of them excess —
the excess first of wealth and then of freedom, is the element of
decay.
The eighth book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and
fanciful allusions ; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a
greater extent than anywhere else in Plato. We may remark,
(i), the description of the two nations in one, which become more
and more divided in the Greek Republics, as in feudal times, and
perhaps also in our own ; (2), the notion of democracy expressed
in a sort of Pythagorean formula as equality among unequals ;
(3), the free and easy ways of men and animals, which are charac-
teristic of liberty, as foreign mercenaries and universal mistrust
are of the tyrant ; (4), the proposal that mere debts should not be
recoverable by law is a speculation which has often been enter-
tained by reformers of the law in modern times, and is in harmony
with the tendencies of modern legislation. Debt and land were
the two great difficulties of the ancient lawgiver : in modern times
we may be said to have almost, if not quite, solved the first of these
difficulties, but hardly the second.
Still more remarkable are the corresponding portraits of in-
dividuals : there is the family picture of the father and mother
and the old servant of the timocratical man, and the out-
ward respectability and inherent meanness of the oligarchical ;
the uncontrolled licence and freedom of the democrat, in which
the young Alcibiades seems to be depicted, doing right or wrong
as he pleases, and who at last, like the prodigal, goes into a far
country (note here the play of language by which the democratic
man is himself represented under the image of a State having
a citadel and receiving embassies) ; and there is the wild-beast
nature, which breaks loose in his successor. The hit about the
tyrant being a parricide ; the representation of the tyrant's life as
k
cxxx The Number of the State.
Republic an obscene dream ; the rhetorical surprise of a more miserable
VIII. than the most miserable of men in Book ix ; the hint to the poets
INTRODUC- \
TION. that if they are the friends of tyrants there is no place for them in
a constitutional State, and that they are too clever not to see the
propriety of their own expulsion ; the continuous image of the
drones who are of two kinds, swelling at last into the monster
drone having wings (see infra, Book ix),— are among Plato's
happiest touches. ">
There remains to be considered the great difficulty of this book
of the Republic, the so-called number of the State. This is a
puzzle almost as great as the Number of the Beast in the Book of
Revelation, and though apparently known to Aristotle, is referred
to by Cicero as a proverb of obscurity (Ep. ad Att. vii. 13, 5). And
some have imagined that there is no answer to the puzzle, and
that Plato has been practising upon his readers. But such a
deception as this is inconsistent with the manner in which
Aristotle speaks of the number (Pol. v. 12, § 7), and would have
been ridiculous to any reader of the Republic who was ac-
quainted with Greek mathematics. As little reason is there for
supposing that Plato intentionally used obscure expressions ; the
obscurity arises from our want of familiarity with the subject.
On the other hand, Plato himself indicates that he is not
altogether serious, and in describing his number as a solemn
jest of the Muses, he appears to imply some degree of satire
on the symbolical use of number. (Cp. Cratylus, passim ; Protag.
342 ff.)
Our hope of understanding the passage depends principally
on an accurate study of the words themselves ; on which a faint
light is thrown by the parallel passage in the ninth book. Another
help is the allusion in Aristotle, who makes the important remark
that the latter part of the passage (from kv «nVpiro? irv6fj.rjvt K.T.X.)
describes a solid figure1. Some further clue may be gathered
from the appearance of the Pythagorean triangle, which is denoted
by the numbers 3, 4, 5, and in which, as in every right-angled
1 Pol. v. 12, § 8 : — ' He only says that nothing is abiding, but that all things
change in a certain cycle ; and that the origin of the change is a base of
numbers which are in the ratio of 4 : 3 ; and this when combined with a figure of
five gives two harmonies ; he means when the number of this figure becomes
solid/
The Number of the State. cxxxi
triangle, the squares of the two lesser sides equal the square of the Republic
hypotenuse (32 + 42 = 52, or 9+ 16 = 25).
Plato begins by speaking of a perfect or cyclical number (cp.
Tim. 39 D), i. e. a number in which the sum of the divisors equals
the whole ; this is the divine or perfect number in which all lesser
cycles or revolutions are complete. He also speaks of a human
or imperfect number, having four terms and three intervals of
numbers which are related to one another in certain proportions ;
these he converts into figures, and finds in them when they have
been raised to the third power certain elements of number, which
give two 'harmonies,' the one square, the other oblong; but he
does not say that the square number answers to the divine, or
the oblong number to the human cycle ; nor is any intimation
given that the first or divine number represents the period of the
world, the second the period of the state, or of the human race as
Zeller supposes ; nor is the divine number afterwards mentioned
(cp. Arist.). The second is the number of generations or births,
and presides over them in the same mysterious manner in
which the stars preside over them, or in which, according to
the Pythagoreans, opportunity, justice, marriage, are repre-
sented by some number or figure. This is probably the number
216.
The explanation given in the text supposes the two harmonies
to make up the number 8000. This explanation derives a certain
plausibility from the circumstance that 8000 is the ancient number
of the Spartan citizens (Herod, vii. 34), and would be what Plato
might have called ' a number which nearly concerns the popula-
tion of a city ' (588 A) ; the mysterious disappearance of the
Spartan population may possibly have suggested to him the first
cause of his decline of States. The lesser or square ' harmony,' of
400, might be a symbol of the guardians, — the larger or oblong
' harmony,' of the people, and the numbers 3, 4, 5 might refer re-
spectively to the three orders in the State or parts of the soul, the
four virtues, the five forms of government. The harmony of the
musical scale, which is elsewhere used as a symbol of the harmony
of the state (Rep. iv. 443 D), is also indicated. For the numbers
3, 4, 5, which represent the sides of the Pythagorean triangle, also
denote the intervals of the scale.
The terms used in the statement of the problem may be
k2
cxxxii The Number of the State.
Republic explained as follows. A perfect number (reXeio?
VIII. as aireacjy stated, is one which is equal to the sum of its
INTRODUC-
TION. Thus 6, which is the first perfect or cyclical number, =
The words opot, ' terms ' or ' notes,' and aTroorao-cis, ' intervals,' are
applicable to music as well as to number and figure. IIpa>Ta> is the
'base' on which the whole calculation depends, or the 'lowest
term ' from which it can be worked out. The words dwdpevai rf
KOI dvva<rrfv6pcvai have been variously translated— ' squared and
cubed ' (Donaldson), ' equalling and equalled in power ' (Weber),
' by involution and evolution,' i. e. by raising the power and ex-
tracting the root (as in the translation). Numbers are called ' like
and unlike ' (opoiovvres re KOI dvopotovvrfs) when the factors or the
sides of the planes and cubes which they represent are or are not
in the same ratio : e. g. 8 and 27 = 23 and 33 ; and conversely.
'Waxing' (avgovrcs) numbers, called also 'increasing' (vnfpreXels),
are those which are exceeded by the sum of their divisors : e. g.
12 and 18 are less than 16 and 21. 'Waning ' (<p.6ivovrcs) numbers,
called also ' decreasing ' (/\Ai7r«s), are those which exceed the sum
of their divisors: e.g. 8 and 27 exceed 7 and 13. The words
translated ' commensurable and agreeable to one another ' (Trpoo^-
yopa KOI fora) seem to be different ways of describing the same
relation, with more or less precision. They are equivalent to
'expressible in terms having the same relation to one another,'
like the series 8, 12, 18, 27, each of which numbers is in the
relation of i^ to the preceding. The 'base,' or 'fundamental
number, which has £ added to it ' (i £) = £ or a musical fourth.
'Appovia is a ' proportion ' of numbers as of musical notes, applied
either to the parts or factors of a single number or to the relation
of one number to another. The first harmony is a 'square'
number (IO-TJV Ivdus) ; the second harmony is an ' oblong ' number
(irpopriKT)), i.e. a number representing a figure of which the
opposite sides only are equal. 'Aptd/uu dnb 8iap(Tpa>v = ' numbers
squared from ' or 'upon diameters ' ; farS* = ' rational,' i.e. omitting
fractions, appqrw*', ' irrational,' i. e. including fractions ; e. g. 49 is a
square of the rational diameter of a figure the side of which = 5 :
50, of an irrational diameter of the same. For several of
the explanations here given and for a good deal besides I am
indebted to an excellent article on the Platonic Number by
Dr. Donaldson (Proc. of the Philol. Society, vol. i. p. 81 ff. ).
The Number of the State. cxxxiii
The conclusions which he draws from these data are summed Republic
up by him as follows. Having assumed that the number of the VIIL
INTRODUC-
perfect or divine cycle is the number of the world, and the ™>N-
number of the imperfect cycle the number of the state, he
proceeds: 'The period of the world is defined by the perfect
number 6, that of the state by the cube of that number or 216,
which is the product of the last pair of terms in the Platonic
Tetractys * ; and if we take this as the basis of our computation,
we shall have two cube numbers (avgrjo-eis BwdpevaL re KCU dwa-
orevo/Ltewu), viz. 8 and 27; and the mean proportionals between
these, viz. 12 and 18, will furnish three intervals and four terms,
and these terms and intervals stand related to one another
in the sesqui-altera ratio, i. e. each term is to the preceding as f .
Now if we remember that the number 216 = 8 x 27 = 3* + 4s + 53,
and that 32 + 42 = 52, we must admit that this number implies the
numbers 3, 4, 5, to which musicians attach so much importance.
And if we combine the ratio f with the number 5, or multiply
the ratios of the sides by the hypotenuse, we shall by first squaring
and then cubing obtain two expressions, which denote the ratio of
the two last pairs of terms in the Platonic Tetractys, the former
multiplied by the square, the latter by the cube of the number 10,
the sum of the first four digits which constitute the Platonic
Tetractys.' The two dpnoviat he elsewhere explains as
follows : ' The first dppovia is "IOTJV tVa/as- IKCLTOV roo-avraW, in other
words (£ x s)2 = loo x §f. The second Appovia, a cube of the same
root, is described as 100 multipjied (a) by the rational diameter of
5 diminished by unity, i. e., as shown above, 48 : (/3) by two in-
commensurable diameters, i. e. the two first irrationals, or 2 and 3 :
and (y) by the cube of 3, or 27. Thus we have (48 + 5 + 27) 100
= loco x 23. This second harmony is to be the cube of the number
of which the former harmony is the square, and therefore must be
divided by the cube of 3. In other words, the whole expression
will be: (i), for the first harmony, ^-: (2), for the second
harmony, ^^.'
The reasons which have inclined me to agree with Dr. Donaldson
and also with Schleiermacher in supposing that 216 is the Platonic
number of births are : (i) that it coincides with the description of
the number given in the first part of the passage (eV o> irpa>T<* . . .
1 The Platonic Tetractys consisted of a series of seven terms, i, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27.
cxxxiv The Niimber of the State.
Republic dire^vav) : (2) that the number 216 with its permutations would
III. have been familiar to a Greek mathematician, though unfamiliar to
INTRODUC-
TION. us : (3) that 216 is the cube of 6, and also the sum of 33, 4', 53, the
numbers 3, 4, 5 representing the Pythagorean triangle, of which
the sides when squared equal the square of the hypotenuse (32 + 4*
= 52) : (4) that it is also the period of the Pythagorean Metempsy-
chosis : (5) the three ultimate terms or bases (3, 4, 5) of which
216 is composed answer to the third, fourth, fifth in the musical
scale : (6) that the number 216 is the product of the cubes of 2 and
3, which are the two last terms in the Platonic Tetractys : (7) that
the Pythagorean triangle is said by Plutarch (de Is. et Osir., 373 E),
Proclus (super prima Eucl. iv. p. in), and Quintilian (de Musica
iii. p. 152) to be contained in this passage, so that the tradition of
the school seems to point in the same direction : (8) that the
Pythagorean triangle is called also the figure of marriage (ya/^Xtoi/
fitaypa/i/xa).
But though agreeing with Dr. Donaldson thus far, I see no
reason for supposing, as he does, that the first or perfect number
is the world, the human or imperfect number the state ; nor has
he given any proof that the second harmony is a cube. Nor do
I think that dpp^rwi/ Se §v*lv can mean 'two incommensurables,'
which he arbitrarily assumes to be 2 and 3, but rather, as the
preceding clause implies, dvelv dptdnolv OTTO dpprjrav Sia/ieVpooi/ TTffj.-
TrdSos, i. e. two square numbers based upon irrational diameters of
a figure the side of which is 5 = 50 x 2.
The greatest objection to the translation is the sense given to
the words eV/rpiroff irvdfjLT]v K.T.A., 'a base of three with a third
added to it, multiplied by 5.' In this somewhat forced manner
Plato introduces once more the numbers of the Pythagorean
triangle. But the coincidences in the numbers which follow are
in favour of the explanation. The first harmony of 400, as has
been already remarked, probably represents the rulers; the
second and oblong harmony of 7600, the people.
And here we take leave of the difficulty. The discovery of
the riddle would be useless, and would throw no light on
ancient mathematics. The point of interest is that Plato should
have used such a symbol, and that so much of the Pythagorean
spirit should have prevailed in him. His general meaning is
that divine creation is perfect, and is represented or presided
The Number of the State. cxxxv
over by a perfect or cyclical number; human generation is im- Republic
perfect, and represented or presided over by an imperfect number
or series of numbers. The number 5040, which is the number
of the citizens in the Laws, is expressly based by him on utilitarian
grounds, namely, the convenience of the number for division ; it
is also made up of the first seven digits multiplied by one another.
The contrast of the perfect and imperfect number may have been
easily suggested by the corrections of the cycle, which were made
first by Meton and secondly by Callippus ; (the latter is said to
have been a pupil of Plato). Of the degree of importance or of
exactness to be attributed to the problem, the number of the tyrant
in Book ix. (729 = 365 x 2), and the slight correction of the error in
the number 5040^12 (Laws, 771 C), may furnish a criterion.
There is nothing surprising in the circumstance that those who
were seeking for order in nature and had found order in number,
should have imagined one to give law to the other. Plato believes
in a power of number far beyond what he could see realized in the
world around him, and he knows the great influence which ' the
little matter of i, 2, 3 ' (vii. 522 C) exercises upon education. He
may even be thought to have a prophetic anticipation of the dis-
coveries of Quetelet and others, that numbers depend upon num-
bers; e.g. — in population, the numbers of births and the respective
numbers of children born of either sex, on the respective ages of
parents, i.e. on other numbers.
Steph. BOOK IX. Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom ANALYSIS.
5'1 we have to enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live — in
happiness or in misery ? There is, however, a previous question
of the nature and number of the appetites, which I should like to
consider first. Some of them are unlawful, and yet admit of being
chastened and weakened in various degrees by the power of reason
and law. ' What appetites do you mean ? ' I mean those which
are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which get up and
walk about naked without any self-respect or shame ; and there is
no conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of which,
in imagination, they may not be guilty. ' True,' he said ; * very
true.' But when a man's pulse beats temperately; and he has
supped on a feast of reason and come to a knowledge of himself
cxxxvi Analysis 572-574.
Republic before going to rest, and has satisfied his desires just enough to 572
ANALYSIS Prevent t^ie^r perturbing his reason, which remains clear and
luminous, and when he is free from quarrel and heat, — the visions
which he has on his bed are least irregular and abnormal. Even
in good men there is such an irregular wild-beast nature, which
peers out in sleep.
To return : — You remember what was said of the democrat ;
that he was the son of a miserly father, who encouraged the
saving desires and repressed the ornamental and expensive ones ;
presently the youth got into fine company, and began to entertain a
dislike to his father's narrow ways ; and being a better man than
the corrupters of his youth, he came to a mean, and led a life, not
of lawless or slavish passion, but of regular and successive indul-
gence. Now imagine that the youth has become a father, and has
a son who is exposed to the same temptations, and has companions
who lead him into every sort of iniquity, and parents and friends
who try to keep him right. The counsellors of evil find that their 573
only chance of retaining him is to implant in his soul a monster
drone, or love ; while other desires buzz around him and mystify
him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster love takes pos-
session of him, and puts an end to every true or modest thought
or wish. Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny ; and
the tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a
drinking, lusting, furious sort of animal.
And how does such an one live ? * Nay, that you must tell me.'
Well then, I fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries,
and love will be the lord and master of the house. Many desires
require much money, and so he spends all that he has and
borrows more ; and when he has nothing the young ravens are
still in the nest in which they were hatched, crying for food. Love 574
urges them on ; and they must be gratified by force or fraud, or if
not, they become painful and troublesome; and as the new
pleasures succeed the old ones, so will the son take possession of
the goods of his parents ; if they show signs of refusing, he will
defraud and deceive them ; and if they openly resist, what then ?
' I can only say, that I should not much like to be in their place.' But,
O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for some new-fangled and
unnecessary love he will give up his old father and mother, best
and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the hour !
Analysis 574-577. cxxxvii
Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! Republic
IX.
ANALYSIS.
IX
When there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or
pickpocket, or robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of
his youth, and he becomes in sober reality the monster that he
575 was sometimes in sleep. He waxes strong in all violence and
lawlessness ; and is ready for any deed of daring that will
supply the wants of his rabble-rout. In a well-ordered State
there are only a few such, and these in time of war go out and
become the mercenaries of a tyrant. But in time of peace they
stay at home and do mischief; they are the thieves, footpads,
cut-purses, man-stealers of the community ; or if they are able
to speak, they turn false-witnesses and informers. ' No small
catalogue of crimes truly, even if the perpetrators are few.' Yes, I
said ; but small and great are relative terms, and no crimes which
are committed by them approach those of the tyrant, whom this
class, growing strong and numerous, create out of themselves. If
the people yield, well and good ; but, if they resist, then, as before
he beat his father and mother, so now he beats his fatherland and
motherland, and places his mercenaries over them. Such men in
their early days live with flatterers, and they themselves flatter
576 others, in order to gain their ends ; but they soon discard their
followers when they have no longer any need of them ; they are
always either masters or servants, — the joys of friendship are
unknown to them. And they are utterly treacherous and unjust,
if the nature of justice be at all understood by us. They realize
our dream ; and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and
leads the life of a tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst
of them, and being the worst of them, will also be the most
miserable.
Like man, like State, — the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny,
which is the extreme opposite of the royal State ; for one is the
best and the other the worst. But which is the happier ? Great
and terrible as the tyrant may appear enthroned amid his satel-
lites, let us not be afraid to go in and ask ; and the answer is, that
the monarchical is the happiest, and the tyrannical the most
577 miserable of States. And may we not ask the same question
about the men themselves, requesting some one to look into them
who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and will not be
panic-struck by the vain pomp of tyranny ? I will suppose that he
cxxxviii Analysis 577-579.
Republic is one who has lived with him, and has seen him in family life,
™ or perhaps in the hour of trouble and danger.
ANALYSIS.
Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom
we seek, let us begin by comparing the individual and State, and '
ask first of all, whether the State is likely to be free or enslaved —
Will there not be a little freedom and a great deal of slavery ? And
the freedom is of the bad, and the slavery of the good ; and this
applies to the man as well as to the State ; for his soul is full of
meanness and slavery, and the better part is enslaved to the
worse. He cannot do what he would, and his mind is full of con-
fusion ; he is the very reverse of a freeman. The State will be 578
poor and full of misery and sorrow ; and the man's soul will also
be poor and full of sorrows, and he will be the most miserable of
men. No, not the most miserable, for there is yet a more miser-
able. ' Who is that ? ' The tyrannical man who has the misfortune
also to become a public tyrant. ' There I suspect that you are
right.' Say rather, ' I am sure ;' conjecture is out of place in an
enquiry of this nature. He is like a wealthy owner of slaves,
only he has more of them than any private individual. You will
say, ' The owners of slaves are not generally in any fear of them.'
But why ? Because the whole city is in a league which protects
the individual. Suppose however that one of these owners and
his household is carried off by a god into a wilderness, where there
are no freemen to help him — will he not be in an agony of terror ?
— will he not be compelled to flatter his slaves and to promise them 579
many things sore against his will ? And suppose the same god
who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who
declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of
them should be punished with death. * Still worse and worse !
He will be in the midst of his enemies.' And is not our tyrant
such a captive soul, who is tormented by a swarm of passions
which he cannot indulge ; living indoors always like a woman, and
jealous of those who can go out and see the world ?
Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be
still more miserable in a public station ? Master of others when
he is not master of himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be
an athlete ; the meanest of slaves and the most abject of flatterers ;
wanting all things, and never able to satisfy his desires ; always in
fear and distraction, like the State of which he is the representative.
Analysis 580-583. cxxxix
580 His jealous, hateful, faithless temper grows worse with com- Republic
mand ; he is more and more faithless, envious, unrighteous, — the
most wretched of men, a misery to himself and to others. And
so let us have a final trial and proclamation ; need we hire a
herald, or shall I proclaim the result ? < Make the proclamation
yourself.' The son of Ariston (the best] is of opinion that the best
and justest of men is also the happiest^ and that this is he who is the
most royal master of himself j and that the unjust man is he who is
the greatest tyrant of himself and of his State. And I add further —
* seen or unseen by gods or men?
This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three
kinds of pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul
581 — reason, passion, desire ; under which last is comprehended
avarice as well as sensual appetite, while passion includes am-
bition, party-feeling, love of reputation. Reason, again, is solely
directed to the attainment of truth, and careless of money and
reputation. In accordance with the difference of men's natures,
one of these three principles is in the ascendant, and they have
their several pleasures corresponding to them. Interrogate now
the three natures, and each one will be found praising his own
pleasures and depreciating those of others. The money-maker
will contrast the vanity of knowledge with the solid advantages of
wealth. The ambitious man will despise knowledge which brings
no honour ; whereas the philosopher will regard only the fruition
of truth, and will call other pleasures necessary rather than good.
582 Now, how shall we decide between them ? Is there any better
criterion than experience and knowledge? And which of the
three has the truest knowledge and the widest experience ? The
experience of youth makes the philosopher acquainted with the
two kinds of desire, but the avaricious and the ambitious man never
taste the pleasures of truth and wisdom. Honour he has equally
with them; they are 'judged of him,' but he is 'not judged of
them,' for they never attain to the knowledge of true being. And
his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only wealth
and honour ; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be the
truest. And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the
rational part .of the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the
583 pleasantest. He who has a right to judge judges thus. Next comes
the life of ambition, and, in the third place, that of money-making.
cxl Analysis 583-585.
Republic Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust— once more, as in
ANALYSIS. an OtymPian contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus,
let him try a fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures
of the wise are true and pure ; all others are a shadow only. Let
us examine this : Is not pleasure opposed to pain, and is there not
a mean state which is neither ? When a man is sick, nothing is
more pleasant to him than health. But this he never found out
while he was well. In pain he desires only to cease from pain; on
the other hand, when he is in an ecstasy of pleasure, rest is painful
to him. Thus rest or cessation is both pleasure and pain. But
can that which is neither become both ? Again, pleasure and pain
are motions, and the absence of them is rest ; but if so, how can 584
the absence of either of them be the other ? Thus we are led to
infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and witchery of
the senses. And these are not the only pleasures, for there are
others which have no preceding pains. Pure pleasure then is not
the absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure ;
although most of the pleasures which reach the mind through
the body are reliefs of pain, and have not only their reactions when
they depart, but their anticipations before they come. They can
be best described in a simile. There is in nature an upper, lower,
and middle region, and he who passes from the lower to the
middle imagines that he is going up and is already in the upper
world ; and if he were taken back again would think, and truly
think, that he was descending. All this arises out of his ignorance
of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. And a like confu-
sion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things.
The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white ; and 585
the man who compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence
of pain pleasure. Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the
body, ignorance and folly of the soul ; and food is the satisfaction
of the one, knowledge of the other. Now which is the purer
satisfaction — that of eating and drinking, or that of knowledge?
Consider the matter thus : The satisfaction of that which has more
existence is truer than of that which has less. The invariable and
immortal has a more real existence than the variable and mortal,
and has a corresponding measure of knowledge and truth. The
soul, again, has more existence and truth and knowledge than the
body, and is therefore more really satisfied and has a more
Analysis 586-588. cxli
586 natural pleasure. Those who feast only on earthly food, are Republic
Ty
always going at random up to the middle and down again ; but
they never pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true
pleasure. They are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensua-
lity, and ready to kill one another by reason of their insatiable
lust ; for they are not filled with true being, and their vessel is
leaky (cp. Gorgias, 243 A, foil.). Their pleasures are mere
shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and intensified by
contrast, and therefore intensely desired ; and men go fighting
about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the
shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth.
The same may be said of the passionate element :— the desires
of the ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior
satisfaction. Only when under the guidance of reason do either of
587 the other principles do their own business or attain the pleasure
which is natural to them. When not attaining, they compel the
other parts of the soul to pursue a shadow of pleasure which is not
theirs. And the more distant they are from philosophy and
reason, the more distant they will be from law and order, and
the more illusive will be their pleasures. The desires of love
and tyranny are the farthest from law, and those of the king
are nearest to it. There is one genuine pleasure, and two
spurious ones : the tyrant goes beyond even the latter ; he has
run away altogether from law and reason. Nor can the measure
of his inferiority be told, except in a figure. The tyrant is the
third removed from the oligarch, and has therefore, not a shadow
of his pleasure, but the shadow of a shadow only. The oligarch,
again, is thrice removed from the king, and thus we get the for-
mula 3x3, which is the number of a surface, representing the
shadow which is the tyrant's pleasure, and if you like to cube
this f number of the beast,' you will find that the measure of
the difference amounts to 729 ; the king is 729 times more happy
than the tyrant. And this extraordinary number is nearly equal
to the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 = 730) ; and
588 is therefore concerned with human life. This is the interval
between a good and bad man in happiness only : what must
be the difference between them in comeliness of life and virtue !
Perhaps you may remember some one saying at the beginning
of our discussion that the unjust man was profited if he had the
cxlii Analysis 588-590.
Republic reputation of justice. Now that we know the nature of justice
ANALYSIS and injusticei let us make an image of the soul, which will
personify his words. First of all, fashion a multitudinous beast,
having a ring of heads of all manner of animals, tame and wild,
and able to produce and change them at pleasure. Suppose
now another form of a lion, and another of a man ; the second
smaller than the first, the third than the second ; join them
together and cover them with a human skin, in which they are
completely concealed. When this has been done, let us tell
the supporter of injustice that he is feeding up the beasts and 589
starving the man. The maintainer of justice, on the other hand,
is trying to strengthen the man ; he is nourishing the gentle
principle within him, and making an alliance with the lion heart,
in order that he may be able to keep down the many-headed
hydra, and bring all into unity with each other and with them-
selves. Thus in every point of view, whether in relation to
pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and the
unjust wrong.
But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally
in error. Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the
man, or rather to the God in man ; the ignoble, that which sub-
jects the man to the beast ? And if so, who would receive gold on
condition that he was to degrade the noblest part of himself under
the worst? — who would sell his son or daughter into the hands
of brutal and evil men, for any amount of money ? And will
he sell his own fairer and diviner part without any compunction
to the most godless and foul ? Would he not be worse than 590
Eriphyle, who sold her husband's life for a necklace ? And in-
temperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and
pride and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion
and serpent element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused
by a too great relaxation of spirit. Flattery and meanness again
arise when the spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the
lion is habituated to become a monkey. The real disgrace of
handicraft arts is, that those who are engaged in them have
to flatter, instead of mastering their desires ; therefore we say
that they should be placed under the control of the better prin-
ciple in another because they have none in themselves ; not, as
Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the subjects, but for
Analysis 591, 592. cxliii
their good. And our intention in educating the young, is to Republic
591 give them self-control; the law desires to nurse up in them a ANALY'SIS
higher principle, and when they have acquired this, they may
go their ways.
' What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world '
and become more and more wicked ? Or what shall he profit by
escaping discovery, if the concealment of evil prevents the cure ?
If he had been punished, the brute within him would have been
silenced, and the gentler element liberated ; and he would have
united temperance, justice, and wisdom in his soul — a union
better far than any combination of bodily gifts. The man of
understanding will honour knowledge above all ; in the next place
he will keep under his body, not only for the sake of health
and strength, but in order to attain the most perfect harmony
of body and soul. In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim
at order and harmony ; he will not desire to heap up wealth
without measure, but he will fear that the increase of wealth
will disturb the constitution of his own soul. For the same
592 reason he will only accept such honours as will make him a
better man ; any others he will decline. ' In that case,' said he,
' he will never be a politician.' Yes, but he will, in his own city ;
though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine
accident. ' You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city,
which has no place upon earth.' But in heaven, I replied,
there is a pattern of such a city, and he who wishes may order
his life after that image. Whether such a state is or ever will
be matters not; he will act according to that pattern and no
other
The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic INTRODUC-
are : — (i) the account of pleasure ; (2) the number of the interval
which divides the king from the tyrant ; (3) the pattern which is in
heaven.
i. Plato's account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation,
and in this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the
views which are attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not,
like the Cynics, opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that
the several parts of the soul shall have their natural satisfac-
tion ; he even agrees with the Epicureans in describing pleasure
cxliv Plato 's Account of pleasure.
Republic as something more than the absence of pain. This is proved
INTRODUC- by tne circumstance tnat there are pleasures which have no
TION. antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as
the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and an-
ticipation. In the previous book (pp. 558, 559) he had made the
distinction between necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is
repeated by Aristotle, and he now observes that there are a
further class of ' wild beast ' pleasures, corresponding to Aris-
totle's 0T)pioTT)s. He dwells upon the relative and unreal character
of sensual pleasures and the illusion which arises out of the
contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the superiority of
the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the fleeting
pleasures of sense and emotion. The pre-eminence of royal
pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form, a
judgment of the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of
the soul are incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. Thus,
in his treatment of pleasure, as in many other subjects, the
philosophy of Plato is ' sawn up into quantities ' by Aristotle ;
the analysis which was originally made by him became in the
next generation the foundation of further technical distinctions.
Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the illusion under which
the ancients fell of regarding the transience of pleasure as a proof
of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence of the in-
tellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the knowledge
from which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that
the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not
more lasting than other pleasures, and are almost equally de-
pendent on the accidents of our bodily state (cp. Introd. to
Philebus).
2. The number of the interval which separates the king from
the tyrant, and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube
of 9, which Plato characteristically designates as a number con-
cerned with human life, because nearly equivalent to the number
of days and nights in the year. He is desirous of proclaiming
that the interval between them is immeasurable, and invents a
formula to give expression to his idea. Those who spoke of
justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring (Prot. 357 A),
saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the figure
of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the
* The kingdom of heaven is within you' cxlv
pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. And in Republic
modern times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato lNTROpUC
employed as a philosophical formula. ' It is not easy to estimate TION-
the loss of the tyrant, except perhaps in this way,' says Plato.
So we might say, that although the life of a good man is not
to be compared to that of a bad man, yet you may measure the
diiference between them by valuing one minute of the one at
an hour of the other (' One day in thy courts is better than a
thousand '), or you might say that ' there is an infinite diiference.'
But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase, * They are
a thousand miles asunder.' And accordingly Plato finds the
natural vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers;
this arithmetical formula he draws out with the utmost serious-
ness, and both here and in the number of generation seems to
find an additional proof of the truth of his speculation in forming
the number into a geometrical figure ; just as persons in our own
day are apt to fancy that a statement is verified when it has been
only thrown into an abstract form. In speaking of the number
729 as proper to human life, he probably intended to intimate
that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the royal life.
The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids
is effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the
mathematical groundwork of this fanciful expression. There is
some difficulty in explaining the steps by which the number
729 is obtained ; the oligarch is removed in the third degree
from the royal and aristocratical, and the tyrant in the third
degree from the oligarchical ; but we have to arrange the terms
as the sides of a square and to count the oligarch twice over,
thus reckoning them not as = 5 but as = 9. The square of 9 is
passed lightly over as only a step towards the cube.
3. Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more
and more convinced of the ideal character of his own specula-
tions. At the end of the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven
takes the place of the city of philosophers on earth. The vision
which has received form and substance at his hands, is now
discovered to be at a distance. And yet this distant kingdom
is also the rule of man's life (Bk. vii. 540 E). (' Say not lo !
here, or lo ! there, for the kingdom of God is within you.') Thus
a note is struck which prepares for the revelation of a future
1
cxlvi Analysis 595-597.
Republic life in the following Book. But the future life is present still ; the
IX.
INTRODUC-
T y
ideal of politics is to be realized in the individual.
ANALYSIS. BOOK X. Many things pleased me in the order of our State, Steph.
but there was nothing which I liked better than the regulation 595
about poetry. The division of the soul throws a new light on
our exclusion of imitation. I do not mind telling you in confi-
dence that all poetry is an outrage on the understanding, unless
the hearers have that balm of knowledge which heals error.
I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even now he
appears to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. But
much as I love the man, I love truth more, and therefore I
must speak out : and first of all, will you explain what is imita-
tion, for really I do not understand ? ' How likely then that I
should understand ! ' That might very well be, for the duller often 596
sees better than the keener eye. 'True, but in your presence
I can hardly venture to say what I think.' Then suppose that
we begin in our old fashion, with the doctrine of universals.
Let us assume the existence of beds and tables. There is one
idea of a bed, or of a table, which the maker of each had in
his mind when making them ; he did not make the ideas of beds
and tables, but he made beds and tables according to the ideas.
And is there not a maker of the works of all workmen, who
makes not only vessels but plants and animals, himself, the
earth and heaven, and things in heaven and under the earth?
He makes the Gods also. ' He must be a wizard indeed ! ' But
do you not see that there is a sense in which you could dp
the same ? You have only to take a mirror, and catch the
reflection of the sun, and the earth, or anything else— there now
you have made them. ' Yes, but only in appearance.' Exactly so ;
and the painter is such a creator as you are with the mirror, and
he is even more unreal than the carpenter; although neither
the carpenter nor any other artist can be supposed to make 597
the absolute bed. ' Not if philosophers may be believed.' Nor
need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect relation to
the truth. Reflect : — Here are three beds ; one in nature, which
is made by God ; another, which is made by the carpenter ; and
the third, by the painter. God only made one, nor could he
have made more than one; for if there had been two, there
Analysis 597-600. cxlvii
would always have been a third — more absolute and abstract Republic
than either, under which they would have been included. We X'
ANALYSIS.
may therefore conceive God to be the natural maker of the bed,
and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker ; but the
painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make ; he
has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality.
And the tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator,
is thrice removed from the king and from the truth. The painter
598 imitates not the original bed, but the bed made by the carpenter.
And this, without being really different, appears to be different,
and has many points of view, of which only one is caught by
the painter, who represents everything because he represents
a piece of everything, and that piece an image. And he can
paint any other artist, although he knows nothing of their arts ; and
this with sufficient skill to deceive children or simple people.
Suppose now that somebody came to us and told us, how he
had met a man who knew all that everybody knows, and better
than anybody : — should we not infer him to be a simpleton who,
having no discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a
wizard or enchanter, whom he fancied to be all-wise ? And when
we hear persons saying that Homer and the tragedians know
all the arts and all the virtues, must we not infer that they are
599 under a similar delusion ? they do not see that the poets are
imitators, and that their creations are only imitations. 'Very
true.' But if a person could create as well as imitate, he would
rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation only;
he would rather be the receiver than the giver of praise ? ' Yes,
for then he would have more honour and advantage.'
Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. Friend Homer,
say I to him, I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any
art to which your poems incidentally refer, but about their
main subjects— war, military tactics, politics. If you are only
twice and not thrice removed from the truth— not an imitator
or an image-maker, please to inform us what good you have ever
done to mankind ? Is there any city which professes to have
received laws from you, as Sicily and Italy have from Charondas,
600 Sparta from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon ? Or was any war
ever carried on by your counsels ? or is any invention attributed
to you, as there is to Thales and Anacharsis ? Or is there any
la
cxlviii Analysis 600-602.
Republic Homeric way of life, such as the Pythagorean was, in which you
ANALYSIS ^nstructe^ men, and which is called after you ? * No, indeed ;
and Creophylus [Flesh-child] was even more unfortunate in his
breeding than he was in his name, if, as tradition says, Homer in
his lifetime was allowed by him and his other friends to starve.'
Yes, but could this ever have happened if Homer had really
been the educator of Hellas? Would he not have had many
devoted followers? If Protagoras and Prodicus can persuade
their contemporaries that no one can manage house or State
without them, is it likely that Homer and Hesiod would have
been allowed to go about as beggars— I mean if they had really
been able to do the world any good?— would not men have
compelled them to stay where they were, or have followed
them about in order to get education? But they did not; and
therefore we may infer that Homer and all the poets are only
imitators, who do but imitate the appearances of things. For 60 1
as a painter by a knowledge of figure and colour can paint a
cobbler without any practice in cobbling, so the poet can de-
lineate any art in the colours of language, and give harmony and
rhythm to the cobbler and also to the general ; and you know
how mere narration, when deprived of the ornaments of metre,
is like a face which has lost the beauty of youth and never had
any other. Once more, the imitator has no knowledge of reality,
but only of appearance. The painter paints, and the artificer
makes a bridle and reins, but neither understands the use of
them — the knowledge of this is confined to the horseman ; and
so of other things. Thus we have three arts : one of use, an-
other of invention, a third of imitation ; and the user furnishes
the rule to the two others. The flute-player will know the
good and bad flute, and the maker will put faith in him ; but
the imitator will neither know nor have faith — neither science 602
nor true opinion can be ascribed to him. Imitation, then, is
devoid of knowledge, being only a kind of play or sport, and
the tragic and epic poets are imitators in the highest degree.
And now let us enquire, what is the faculty in man which
answers to imitation. Allow me to explain my meaning : Ob-
jects are differently seen when in the water and when out of
the water, when near and when at a distance ; and the painter
or juggler makes use of this variation to impose upon us. And
Analysis 602-605. cxlix
the art of measuring and weighing and calculating comes in to Republic
save our bewildered minds from the power of appearance ; for, '
603 as we were saying, two contrary opinions of the same about
the same and at the same time, cannot both of them be true.
But which of them is true is determined by the art of calcula-
tion ; and this is allied to the better faculty in the soul, as the
arts of imitation are to the worse. And the same holds of the
ear as well as of the eye, of poetry as well as painting. The
imitation is of actions voluntary or involuntary, in which there
is an expectation of a good or bad result, and present experience
of pleasure and pain. But is a man in harmony with himself
when he is the subject of these conflicting influences ? Is there
not rather a contradiction in him ? Let me further ask, whether
604 he is more likely to control sorrow when he is alone or when
he is in company. 'In the latter case.' Feeling would lead
him to indulge his sorrow, but reason and law control him
and enjoin patience ; since he cannot know whether his afflic-
tion is good or evil, and no human thing is of any great
consequence, while sorrow is certainly a hindrance to good
counsel. For when we stumble, we should not, like children,
make an uproar; we should take the measures which reason
prescribes, not raising a lament, but finding a cure. And the
better part of us is ready to follow reason, while the irrational
principle is full of sorrow and distraction at the recollection of
our troubles. Unfortunately, however, this latter furnishes the
chief materials of the imitative arts. Whereas reason is ever
in repose and cannot easily be displayed, especially to a mixed
'605 multitude who have no experience of her. Thus the poet is
like the painter in two ways : first he paints an inferior degree
of truth, and secondly, he is concerned with an inferior part
of the soul. He indulges the feelings, while he enfeebles the
reason ; and we refuse to allow him to have authority over the
mind of man ; for he has no measure of greater and less, and
is a maker of images and very far gone from truth.
But we have not yet mentioned the heaviest count in the
indictment— the power which poetry has of injuriously exciting
the feelings. When we hear some passage in which a hero
laments his sufferings at tedious length, you know that we
sympathize with him and praise the poet ; and yet in our own
cl Analysis 605-608.
Republic sorrows such an exhibition of feeling is regarded as effeminate
ANALYSIS and unmanlv (CP- I°n> 535 E). Now, ought a man to feel pleasure
in seeing another do what he hates and abominates in himself?
Is he not giving way to a sentiment which in his own case he 606
would control? — he is off his guard because the sorrow is an-
other's ; and he thinks that he may indulge his feelings without
disgrace, and will be the gainer by the pleasure. But the in-
evitable consequence is that he who begins by weeping at the
sorrows of others, will end by weeping at his own. The same
is true of comedy, — you may often laugh at buffoonery which
you would be ashamed to utter, and the love of coarse merri-
ment on the stage will at last turn you into a buffoon at home.
Poetry feeds and waters the passions and desires ; she lets
them rule instead of ruling them. And therefore, when we
hear the encomiasts of Homer affirming that he is the educator
of Hellas, and that all life should be regulated by his precepts, 607
we may allow the excellence of their intentions, and agree with
them in thinking Homer a great poet and tragedian. But we
shall continue to prohibit all poetry which goes beyond hymns
to the Gods and praises of famous men. Not pleasure and pain,
but law and reason shall rule in our State.
These are our grounds for expelling poetry ; but lest she
should charge us with discourtesy, let us also make an apology
to her. We will remind her that there is an ancient quarrel
between poetry and philosophy, of which there are many traces
in the writings of the poets, such as the saying of ' the she-dog,
yelping at her mistress,' and 'the philosophers who are ready
to circumvent Zeus,' and 'the philosophers who are paupers.'
Nevertheless we bear her no ill-will, and will gladly allow her to
return upon condition that she makes a defence of herself in
verse ; and her supporters who are not poets may speak in prose.
We confess her charms; but if she cannot show that she is
useful as well as delightful, like rational lovers, we must re-
nounce our love, though endeared to us by early associations.
Having come to years of discretion, we know that poetry is not 608
truth, and that a man should be careful how he introduces her
to that state or constitution which he himself is ; for there is a
mighty issue at stake — no less than the good or evil of a human
soul. And it is not worth while to forsake justice and virtue
A na lysis 608-611. cl L
for the attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of Republic
honour or wealth. 'I agree with you.' AKALYSIS.
And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have
described. ' And can we conceive things greater still ? ' Not,
perhaps, in this brief span of life : but should an immortal being
care about anything short of eternity? 'I do not understand
what you mean ? ' Do you not know that the soul is immortal I
1 Surely you are not prepared to prove that ? * Indeed I am,
' Then let me hear this argument, of which you make so light*
609 You would admit that everything has an element of good and
of evil In all things there is an inherent corruption ; and if this
cannot destroy them, nothing else will. The soul too has her
own corrupting principles, which are injustice, intemperance,
cowardice, and the like. But none of these destroy the soul in
the same sense that disease destroys the body. The soul may be
full of all iniquities, but is not, by reason of them, brought any
nearer to death. Nothing which was not destroyed from within
ever perished by external affection of evil. The body, which
610 is one thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is another,
unless the badness of the food is communicated to the body.
Neither can the soul, which is one thing, be corrupted by the
body, which is another, unless she herself is infected. And
as no bodily evil can infect the soul, neither can any bodily
evil, whether disease or violence, or any other destroy the soul,
unless it can be shown to render her unholy and unjust. But
no one will ever prove that the souls of men become more un-
just when they die. If a person has the audacity to say the
contrary, the answer is — Then why do criminals require the
hand of the executioner, and not die of themselves? 'Truly/
he said, 'injustice would not be very terrible if it brought a
cessation of evil ; but I rather believe that the injustice which
murders others may tend to quicken and stimulate the life of the
unjust.' You are quite right. If sin which is her own natural and
inherent evil cannot destroy the soul, hardly will anything else
6 1 I destroy her. But the soul which cannot be destroyed either by
internal or external evil must be immortal and everlasting. And
if this be true, souls will always exist in the same number. They
cannot diminish, because they cannot be destroyed ; nor yet in-
crease, for the increase of the immortal must come from some-
clii Analysis 611-614.
Republic thing mortal, and so all would end in immortality. Neither is
ANAIYSIS. the soul var^^e anc* diverse ; for that which is immortal must
be of the fairest and simplest composition. If we would conceive
her truly, and so behold justice and injustice in their own
nature, she must be viewed by the light of reason pure as at
birth, or as she is reflected in philosophy when holding con-
verse with the divine and immortal and eternal. In her present
condition we see her only like the sea-god Glaucus, bruised and
maimed in the sea which is the world, and covered with shells 612
and stones which are incrusted upon her from the entertain-
ments of earth.
Thus far, as the argument required, we have said nothing of
the rewards and honours which the poets attribute to justice ;
we have contented ourselves with showing that justice in her-
self is best for the soul in herself, even if a man should put on
a Gyges' ring and have the helmet of Hades too. And now
you shall repay me what you borrowed ; and I will enumerate
the rewards of justice in life and after death. I granted, for
the sake of argument, as you will remember, that evil might
perhaps escape the knowledge of Gods and men, although this
was really impossible. And since I have shown that justice
has reality, you must grant me also that she has the palm of
appearance. In the first place, the just man is known to the
Gods, and he is therefore the friend of the Gods, and he will 613
receive at their hands every good, always excepting such evil
as is the necessary consequence of former sins. All things end
in good to him, either in life or after death, even what appears
to be evil ; for the Gods have a care of him who desires to be
in their likeness. And what shall we say of men ? Is not
honesty the best policy ? The clever rogue makes a great start
at first, but breaks down before he reaches the goal, and slinks
away in dishonour ; whereas the true runner perseveres to the
end, and receives the prize. And you must allow me to repeat
all the blessings which you attributed to the fortunate unjust —
they bear rule in the city, they marry and give in marriage to
whom they will ; and the evils which you attributed to the un-
fortunate just, do really fall in the end on the unjust, although,
as you implied, their sufferings are better veiled in silence.
But all the blessings of this present life are as nothing when 614
Analysis 614-616, cliii
compared with those which await good men after death. 'I Republic
should like to hear about them.' Come, then, and I will tell you
ANALYSIS.
the story of Er, the son of Armenius, a valiant man. He was
supposed to have died in battle, but ten days afterwards his body
was found untouched by corruption and sent home for burial.
On the twelfth day he was placed on the funeral pyre and there
he came to life again, and told what he had seen in the world
below. He said that his soul went with a great company to a
place, in which there were two chasms near together in the earth
beneath, and two corresponding chasms in the heaven above.
And there were judges sitting in the intermediate space, bidding
the just ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand, having
the seal of their judgment set upon them before, while the unjust,
having the seal behind, were bidden to descend by the way on the
left hand. Him they told to look and listen, as he was to be their
messenger to men from the world below. And he beheld and saw
the souls departing after judgment at either chasm ; some who
came from earth, were worn and travel-stained; others, who
came from heaven, were clean and bright. They seemed glad to
meet and rest awhile in the meadow ; here they discoursed with
615 one another of what they had seen in the other world. Those
who came from earth wept at the remembrance of their sorrows,
but the spirits from above spoke of glorious sights and heavenly
bliss. He said that for every evil deed they were punished ten-
fold— now the journey was of a thousand years' duration, because
the life of man was reckoned as a hundred years— and the re-
wards of virtue were in the same proportion. He added some-
thing hardly worth repeating about infants dying almost as soon
as they were born. Of parricides and other murderers he had
tortures still more terrible to narrate. He was present when
one of the spirits asked— Where is Ardiaeus the Great ? (This
Ardiaeus was a cruel tyrant, who had murdered his father, and his
elder brother, a thousand years before.) Another spirit answered,
' He comes not hither, and will never come. And I myself,' he
added, ' actually saw this terrible sight. At the entrance of the
chasm, as we were about to reascend, Ardiaeus appeared, and
some other sinners— most of whom had been tyrants, but not all—
and just as they fancied that they were returning to life, the chasm
616 gave a roar, and then wild, fiery-looking men who knew the
cliv Analysis 616, 617.
Republic meaning of the sound, seized him and several others, and bound
•y
. them hand and foot and threw them down, and dragged them
ANALYSIS.
along at the side of the road, lacerating them and carding them
like wool, and explaining to the passers-by, that they were going
to be cast into hell.' The greatest terror of the pilgrims as-
cending was lest they should hear the voice, and when there
was silence one by one they passed up with joy. To these
sufferings there were corresponding delights.
On the eighth day the souls of the pilgrims resumed their
journey, and in four days came to a spot whence they looked
down upon a line of light, in colour like a rainbow, only brighter
and clearer. One day more brought them to the place, and they
saw that this was the column of light which binds together the
whole universe. The ends of the column were fastened to heaven,
and from them hung the distaff of Necessity, on which all the
heavenly bodies turned — the hook and spindle were of adamant,
and the whorl of a mixed substance. The whorl was in form
like a number of boxes fitting into one another with their edges
turned upwards, making together a single whorl which was
pierced by the spindle. The outermost had the rim broadest,
and the inner whorls were smaller and smaller, and had their
rims narrower. The largest (the fixed stars) was spangled — the
seventh (the sun) was brightest — the eighth (the moon) shone by
the light of the seventh— the second and fifth (Saturn and Mercury) 617
were most like one another and yellower than the eighth — the
third (Jupiter) had the whitest light — the fourth (Mars) was red —
the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. The whole had one
motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven
inner circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees
of swiftness and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees of
Necessity, and a Siren stood hymning upon each circle, while
Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, the daughters of Necessity, sat on
thrones at equal intervals, singing of past, present, and future,
responsive to the music of the Sirens ; Clotho from time to time
guiding the outer circle with a touch of her right hand ; Atropos
with her left hand touching and guiding the inner circles ; Lachesis
in turn putting forth her hand from time to time to guide both of
them. On their arrival the pilgrims went to Lachesis, and there
was an interpreter who arranged them, and taking from her
Analysis 617—619. civ
knees lots, and samples of lives, got up into a pulpit and said : Republic
'Mortal souls, hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Ne-
ANALYSIS.
cessity. A new period of mortal life has begun, and you may
choose what divinity you please ; the responsibility of choosing
618 is with you — God is blameless.' After speaking thus, he cast the
lots among them and each one took up the lot which fell near him.
He then placed on the ground before them the samples of lives,
many more than the souls present ; and there were all sorts of lives,
of men and of animals. There were tyrannies ending in misery
and exile, and lives of men and women famous for their different
qualities ; and also mixed lives, made up of wealth and poverty,
sickness and health. Here, Glaucon, is the great risk of human
life, and therefore the whole of education should be directed to
the acquisition of such a knowledge as will teach a man to refuse
the evil and choose the good. He should know all the combina-
tions which occur in life — of beauty with poverty or with wealth,
— of knowledge with external goods,— and at last choose with
reference to the nature of the soul, regarding that only as the
better life which makes men better, and leaving the rest. And
619 a man must take with him an iron sense of truth and right into the
world below, that there too he may remain undazzled by wealth
or the allurements of evil, and be determined to avoid the extremes
and choose the mean. For this, as the messenger reported the
interpreter to have said, is the true happiness of man. ; and any
one, as he proclaimed, may, if he choose with understanding, have
a good lot, even though he come last. 'Let not the first be
careless in his choice, nor the last despair.' He spoke ; and when
he had spoken, he who had drawn the first lot chose, a tyranny :
he did not see that he was fated to devour his own children — and
when he discovered his mistake, he wept and beat his breast,
blaming chance and the Gods and anybody rather than himself.
He was one of those who had come from heaven, and in his
previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but he
had only habit and no philosophy. Like many another, he made
a bad choice, because he had no experience of life ; whereas those
who came from earth and had seen trouble were not in such a
hurry to choose. But if a man had followed philosophy while
upon earth, and had been moderately fortunate in his lot, he
might not only be happy here, but his pilgrimage both from and
clvi Analysis 619-621.
Republic to this world would be smooth and heavenly. Nothing was more
ANALYSIS. cur*ous than the sPectacle of the choice, at once sad and laughable
and wonderful ; most of the souls only seeking to avoid their own
condition in a previous life. He saw the soul of Orpheus changing 620
into a swan because he would not be born of a woman ; there was
Thamyras becoming a nightingale ; musical birds, like the swan,
choosing to be men ; the twentieth soul, which was that of Ajax,
preferring the life of a lion to that of a man, in remembrance of the
injustice which was done to him in the judgment of the arms;
and Agamemnon, from a like enmity to human nature, passing
into an eagle. About the middle was the soul of Atalanta choosing
the honours of an athlete, and next to her Epeus taking the
nature of a workwoman ; among the last was Thersites, who was
changing himself into a monkey. Thither, the last of all, came
Odysseus, and sought the lot of a private man, which lay neglected
and despised, and when he found it he went away rejoicing, and
said that if he had been first instead of last, his choice would have
been the same. Men, too, were seen passing into animals, and
wild and tame animals changing into one another.
When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent
with each of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He
first of all brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them
within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand ; from
her they were carried to Atropos, who made the threads irre-
versible; whence, without turning round, they passed beneath 621
the throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they
moved on in scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness and
rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water could not
be retained in any vessel ; of this they had all to drink a certain
quantity — some of them drank more than was required, and he
who drank forgot all things. Er himself was prevented from
drinking. When they had gone to rest, about the middle of the
night there were thunderstorms and earthquakes, and suddenly
they were all driven divers ways, shooting like stars to their
birth. Concerning his return to the body, he only knew that
awaking suddenly in the morning he found himself lying on the
pyre.
Thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved, and will be our salvation,
if we believe that the soul is immortal, and hold fast to the
Why was Plato the enemy of the poets f clvii
heavenly way of Justice and Knowledge. So shall we pass Republic
undefiled over the river of Forgetfulness, and be dear to ourselves ANALySIS
and to the Gods, and have a crown of reward and happiness both
in this world and also in the millennial pilgrimage of the other.
The Tenth Book of the Republic of Plato falls into two divisions : INTRODUC-
first, resuming an old thread which has been interrupted,
Socrates assails the poets, who, now that the nature of the soul
has been analyzed, are seen to be very far gone from the truth ;
and secondly, having shown the reality of the happiness of the
just, he demands that appearance shall be restored to him, and
then proceeds to prove the immortality of the soul. The argu-
ment, as in the Phaedo and Gorgias, is supplemented by the vision
of a future life.
Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are
poems and dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a
class, and especially to the dramatic poets ; why he should not
have seen that truth may be embodied in verse as well as in
prose, and that there are some indefinable lights and shadows
of human life which can only be expressed in poetry — some
elements of imagination which always entwine with reason ; why
he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably associated
with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology ; why he should
try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of utility, — •
are questions which have always been debated amongst students
of Plato. Though unable to give a complete answer to them, we
may show— first, that his views arose naturally out of the circum-
stances of his age ; and secondly, we may elicit the truth as well as
the error which is contained in them.
He is the enemy of the poets because poetry was declining in
his own lifetime, and a theatrocracy, as he says in the Laws
(iii. 701 A), had taken the place of an intellectual aristocracy.
Euripides exhibited the last phase of the tragic drama, and in him
Plato saw the friend and apologist of tyrants, and the Sophist
of tragedy. The old comedy was almost extinct; the new had
not yet arisen. Dramatic and lyric poetry, like every other
branch of Greek literature, was falling under the power of
rhetoric. There was no * second or third ' to ^Eschylus and
clviii Why was Plato the enemy of the poets f
Republic Sophocles in the generation which followed them. Aristophanes,
INTRODUC *n one °^ n*s ^ater comedies (Frogs, 89 foil.), speaks of ' thousands
TION. of tragedy-making prattlers,' whose attempts at poetry he com-
pares to the chirping of swallows; 'their garrulity went far
beyond Euripides,' — 'they appeared once upon the stage, and
there was an end of them.' To a man of genius who had a real
appreciation of the godlike ^Eschylus and the noble and gentle
Sophocles, though disagreeing with some parts of their ' theology '
(Rep. ii. 380), these ' minor poets ' must have been contemptible
and intolerable. There is no feeling stronger in the dialogues of
Plato than a sense of the decline and decay both in literature and
in politics which marked his own age. Nor can he have been
expected to look with favour on the licence of Aristophanes, now
at the end of his career, who had begun by satirizing Socrates
in the Clouds, and in a similar spirit forty years afterwards had
satirized the founders of ideal commonwealths in his Eccleziazusae,
or Female Parliament (cp. x. 606 C, and Laws ii. 658 ff. ; 817).
There were other reasons for the antagonism of Plato to poetry.
The profession of an actor was regarded by him as a degradation
of human nature, for 'one man in his life' cannot 'play many
parts ; ' the characters which the actor performs seem to destroy
his own character, and to leave nothing which can be truly called
himself. Neither can any man live his life and act it. The actor
is the slave of his art, not the master of it. Taking this view
Plato is more decided in his expulsion of the dramatic than of the
epic poets, though he must have known that the "Greek tragedians
afforded noble lessons and examples of virtue and patriotism, to
which nothing in Homer can be compared. But great dramatic
or even great rhetorical power is hardly consistent with firmness
or strength of mind, and dramatic talent is often incidentally
associated with a weak or dissolute character.
In the Tenth Book Plato introduces a new series of objections.
First, he says that the poet or painter is an imitator, and in
the third degree removed from the truth. His creations are
not tested by rule and measure ; they are only appearances.
In modern times we should say that art is not merely imita-
tion, but rather the expression of the ideal in forms of sense.
Even adopting the humble image of Plato, from which his
argument derives a colour, we should maintain that the artist
Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ? clix
may ennoble the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, Republic
or by the feeling of home which he introduces ; and there have T X'
INTRODUC-
been modern painters who have imparted such an ideal in- ™>N.
terest to a blacksmith's or a carpenter's shop. The eye or mind
which feels as well as sees can give dignity and pathos to a
ruined mill, or a straw-built shed [Rembrandt], to the hull of
a vessel * going to its last home ' [Turner]. Still more would
this apply to the greatest works of art, which seem to be the
visible embodiment of the divine. Had Plato been asked whether
the Zeus or Athene of Pheidias was the imitation of an imitation
only, would he not have been compelled to admit that something
more was to be found in them than in the form of any mortal ;
and that the rule of proportion to which they conformed was
1 higher far than any geometry or arithmetic could express ? '
(Statesman, 257 A.)
Again, Plato objects to the imitative arts that they express
the emotional rather than the rational part of human nature.
He does not admit Aristotle's theory, that tragedy or other
serious imitations are a purgation of the passions by pity and
fear ; to him they appear only to afford the opportunity of in-
dulging them. Yet we must acknowledge that we may some-
times cure disordered emotions by giving expression to them;
and that they often gain strength when pent up within our own
breast. It is not every indulgence of the feelings which is to be
condemned. For there may be a gratification of the higher as well
as of the lower — thoughts which are too deep or too sad to be
expressed by ourselves, may find an utterance in the words of
poets. Every one would acknowledge that there have been
times when they were consoled and elevated by beautiful music or
by the sublimity of architecture or by the peacefulness of nature.
Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier part of the Republic,
that the arts might have the effect of harmonizing as well as of
enervating the mind ; but in the Tenth Book he regards them
through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He asks only ' What good
have they done ? ' and is not satisfied with the reply, that ' They
have given innocent pleasure to mankind.'
He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets,
since he has found by the analysis of the soul that they are
concerned with the inferior faculties. He means to say that
clx Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ?
Republic the higher faculties have to do with universals, the lower with
, particulars of sense. The poets are on a level with their own
INTRODUC- x
TION. age, but not on a level with Socrates and Plato ; and he was
well aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a rule
of life by any process of legitimate interpretation ; his ironical
use of them is in fact a denial of their authority ; he saw, too,
that the poets were not critics— as he says in the Apology, ' Any
one was a better interpreter of their writings than they were
themselves ' (22 C). He himself ceased to be a poet when he
became a disciple of Socrates ; though, as he tells us of Solon,
'he might have been one of the greatest of them, if he had
not been deterred by other pursuits ' (Tim. 21 C). Thus from
many points of view there is an antagonism between Plato and
the poets, which was foreshadowed to him in the old quarrel
between philosophy and poetry. The poets, as he says in the
Protagoras (316 E), were the Sophists of their day ; and his
dislike of the one class is reflected on the other. He regards
them both as the enemies of reasoning and abstraction, though
in the case of Euripides more with reference to his immoral
sentiments about tyrants and the like. For Plato is the prophet
who 'came into the world to convince men'— first of the fallibility
of sense and opinion, and secondly of the reality of abstract ideas.
Whatever strangeness there may be in modern times in opposing
philosophy to poetry, which to us seem to have so many elements
in common, the strangeness will disappear if we conceive of
poetry as allied to sense, and of philosophy as equivalent to
thought and abstraction. Unfortunately the very word ' idea,' which
to Plato is expressive of the most real of all things, is associated
in our minds with an element of subjectiveness and unreality.
We may note also how he differs from Aristotle who declares
poetry to be truer than history, for the opposite reason, because
it is concerned with universals, not like history, with particulars
(Poet. c. 9, 3).
The things which are seen are opposed in Scripture to the
things which are unseen — they are equally opposed in Plato to
universals and ideas. To him all particulars appear to be floating
about in a world of sense; they have a taint of error or even of
evil. There is no difficulty in seeing that this is an illusion ; for
there is no more error or variation in an individual man, horse,
Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ? clxi
bed, etc., than in the class man, horse, bed, etc. ; nor is the truth Republic
which is displayed in individual instances less certain than that INTRODITC.
which is conveyed through the medium of ideas. But Plato, TION>
who is deeply impressed with the real importance of universals
as instruments of thought, attributes to them an essential truth
which is imaginary and unreal; for universals may be often
false and particulars true. Had he attained to any clear con-
ception of the individual, which is the synthesis of the universal
and the particular ; or had he been able to distinguish between
opinion -and sensation, which the ambiguity of the words 8o£a,
4>atWdat, fiKbs and the like, tended to confuse, he would not
have denied truth to the particulars of sense.
But the poets are also the representatives of falsehood and
feigning in all departments of life and knowledge, like the so-
phists and rhetoricians of the Gorgias and Phaedrus; they
are the false priests, false prophets, lying spirits, enchanters
of the world. There is another count put into the indictment
against them by Plato, that they are the friends of the tyrant,
and bask in the sunshine of his patronage. Despotism in all
ages has had an apparatus of false ideas and false teachers at
its service— in the history of Modern Europe as well as of
Greece and Rome. For no government of men depends solely
upon force; without some corruption of literature and morals
—some appeal to the imagination of the masses — some pretence
to the favour of heaven — some element of good giving power
to evil (cp. i. 352), tyranny, even for a short time, cannot be
maintained. The Greek tyrants were not insensible to the
importance of awakening in their cause a Pseudo - Hellenic
feeling; they were proud of successes at the Olympic games;
they were not devoid of the love of literature and art. Plato
is thinking in the first instance of Greek poets who had graced
the courts of Dionysius or Archelaus : and the old spirit of
freedom is roused within him at their prostitution of the Tragic
Muse in the praises of tyranny. But his prophetic eye extends
beyond them to the false teachers of other ages who are the
creatures of the government under which they live. He com-
pares the corruption of his contemporaries with the idea of a
perfect society, and gathers up into one mass of evil the evils
and errors of mankind; to him they are personified in the
m
clxii Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ?
Republic rhetoricians, sophists, poets, rulers who deceive and govern the
r x- world.
INTRODUC-
TION. A further objection which Plato makes to poetry and the
imitative arts is that they excite the emotions. Here the
modern reader will be disposed to introduce a distinction which
appears to have escaped him. For the emotions are neither
bad nor good in themselves, and are not most likely to be
controlled by the attempt to eradicate them, but by the mode-
rate indulgence of them. And the vocation of art is to present
thought in the form of feeling, to enlist the feelings on the side
of reason, to inspire even for a moment courage or resigna-
tion ; perhaps to suggest a sense of infinity and eternity in a
way which mere language is incapable of attaining. True, the
same power which in the purer age of art embodies gods and
heroes only, may be made to express the voluptuous image of
a Corinthian courtezan. But this only shows that art, like other
outward things, may be turned to good and also to evil, and
is not more closely connected with the higher than with the
lower part of the soul. All imitative art is subject to certain
limitations, and therefore necessarily partakes of the nature
of a compromise. Something of ideal truth is sacrificed for
the sake of the representation, and something in the exactness
of the representation is sacrificed to the ideal. Still, works of
art have a permanent element; they idealize and detain the
passing thought, and are the intermediates between sense and
ideas.
In the present stage of the human mind, poetry and other
forms of fiction may certainly be regarded as a good. But we
can also imagine the existence of an age in which a severer
conception of truth has either banished or transformed them.
At any rate we .must admit that they hold a different place at
different periods of the world's history. In the infancy of man-
kind, poetry, with the exception of proverbs, is the whole of
literature, and the only instrument of intellectual culture ; in
modern times she is the shadow or echo of her former self,
and appears to have a precarious existence. Milton in his day
doubted whether an epic poem was any longer possible. At
the same time we must remember, that 'what Plato would
have called the charms of poetry have been partly transferred
Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ? clxiii
to prose ; he himself (Statesman 304) admits rhetoric to be the Republic
handmaiden of Politics, and proposes to find in the strain of lNTROp.
law (Laws vii. 811) a substitute for the old poets. Among our- T10N-
selves the creative power seems often to be growing weaker,
and scientific fact to be more engrossing and overpowering to
the mind than formerly. The illusion of the feelings commonly
called love, has hitherto been the inspiring influence of modern
poetry and romance, and has exercised a humanizing if not a
strengthening influence on the world. But may not the stimulus
which love has given to fancy be some day exhausted? The
modern English novel which is the most popular of all forms
of reading is not more than a century or two old: will the
tale of love a hundred years hence, after so many thousand
variations of the same theme, be still received with unabated
interest ?
Art cannot claim to be on a level with philosophy or religion,
and may often corrupt them. It is possible to conceive a mental
state in which all artistic representations are regarded as a false
and imperfect expression, either of the religious ideal or of
the philosophical ideal. The fairest forms may be revolting in
certain moods of mind, as is proved by the fact that the Maho-
metans, and many sects of Christians, have renounced the use
of pictures and images. The beginning of a great religion,
whether Christian or Gentile, has not been 'wood or stone,'
but a spirit moving in the hearts of men. The disciples have
met in a large upper room or in ' holes and caves of the earth ' ;
in the second or third generation, they have had mosques,
temples, churches, monasteries. And the revival or reform
of religions, like the first revelation of them, has come from
within and has generally disregarded external ceremonies and
accompaniments.
But poetry and art may also be the expression of the highest
truth and the purest sentiment. Plato himself seems to waver
between two opposite views— when, as in the third Book, he in-
sists that youth should be brought up amid wholesome imagery ;
and again in Book x, when he banishes the poets from his Re-
public. Admitting that the arts, which some of us almost deify,
have fallen short of their higher aim, we must admit on the
other hand that to banish imagination wholly would be suicidal
m 2
clxiv Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ?
Republic as well as impossible. For nature too is a form of art ; and a
Breath °^ tne fresh air or a single glance at the varying land-
scape would in an instant revive and reillumine the extin-
guished spark of poetry in the human breast. In the lower
stages of civilization imagination more than reason distinguishes
man from the animals ; and to banish art would be to banish
thought, to banish language, to banish the expression of all
truth. No religion is wholly devoid of external forms; even
the Mahometan who renounces the use of pictures and images
has a temple in which he worships the Most High, as solemn
and beautiful as any Greek or Christian building. Feeling too
and thought are not really opposed ; for he who thinks must
feel before he can execute. And the highest thoughts, when
they become familiarized to us, are always tending to pass into
the form of feeling.
Plato does not seriously intend to expel poets from life and
society. But he feels strongly the unreality of their writings ; he
is protesting against the degeneracy of poetry in his own day as
we might protest against the want of serious purpose in modern
fiction, against the unseemliness or extravagance of some of our
poets or novelists, against the time-serving of preachers or public
writers, against the regardlessness of truth which to the eye of
the philosopher seems to characterize the greater part of the
world. For we too have reason to complain that our poets and
novelists 'paint inferior truth' and 'are concerned with the
inferior part of the soul'; that the readers of them become
what they read and are injuriously affected by them. And we
look in vain for that healthy atmosphere of which Plato speaks, —
* the beauty which meets the sense like a breeze and imperceptibly
draws the soul, €ven in childhood, into harmony with the beauty
of reason.'
For there might be a poetry which would be the hymn of
divine perfection, the harmony of goodness and truth among
men : a strain which should renew the youth of the world, and bring
back the ages in which the poet was man's only teacher and best
friend, — which would find materials in the living present as well
as in the romance of the past, and might subdue to the fairest
forms of speech and verse the intractable materials of modern
civilization, — which might elicit the simple principles, or, as Plato
Why was Plato the enemy of the poets f clxv
would have called them, the essential forms, of truth and justice Republic
out of the variety of opinion and the complexity of modern
society, — which would preserve all the good of each generation
and leave the bad unsung, — which should be based not on vain
longings or faint imaginings, but on a clear insight into the
nature of man. Then the tale of love might begin again in
poetry or prose, two in one, united in the pursuit of knowledge,
or the service of God and man ; and feelings of love might still
be the incentive to great thoughts and heroic deeds as in the
days of Dante or Petrarch ; and many types of manly and
womanly beauty might appear among us, rising above the or-
dinary level of humanity, and many lives which were like poems
(Laws vii. 817 B), be not only written, but lived by us. A
few such strains have been heard among men in the tragedies
of ^Eschylus and Sophocles, whom Plato quotes, not, as Homer
is quoted by him, in irony, but with deep and serious approval, —
in the poetry of Milton and Wordsworth, and in passages of
other English poets, — first and above all in the Hebrew prophets
and psalmists. Shakespeare has taught us how great men
should speak and act ; he has drawn characters of a wonderful
purity and depth ; he has ennobled the human mind, but, like
Homer (Rep. x. 599 foil.), he ' has left no way of life.' The next
greatest poet of modern times, Goethe, is concerned with 'a
lower degree of truth' ; he paints the world as a stage on which
' all the men and women are merely players ' ; he cultivates
life as an art, but he furnishes no ideals of truth and action. The
poet may rebel against any attempt to set limits to his fancy;
and he may argue truly that moralizing in verse is not poetry.
Possibly, like Mephistopheles in Faust, he may retaliate on.
his adversaries. But the philosopher will still be justified in
asking, ' How may the heavenly gift of poesy be devoted to
the good of mankind ? '
Returning to Plato, we may observe that a similar mixture
of truth and error appears in other parts of the argument. He
is aware of the absurdity of mankind framing their whole lives
according to Homer; just as in the Phaedrus he intimates the
absurdity of interpreting mythology upon rational principles;
both these were the modern tendencies of his own age, which
he deservedly ridicules. On the other hand, his argument that
clxvi The argument for immortality.
Republic Homer, if he had been able to teach mankind anything worth
INTRODUO knowing, would not have been allowed by them to go about
TION. begging as a rhapsodist, is both false and contrary to the spirit
of Plato (cp. Rep. vi. 489 A foil.). It may be compared with
those other paradoxes of the Gorgias, that * No statesman was
ever unjustly put to death by the city of which he was the
head ' ; and that ' No Sophist was ever defrauded by his pupils '
(Gorg. 519 foil.)
The argument for immortality seems to rest on the absolute
dualism of soul and body. Admitting the existence of the soul,
we know of no force which is able to put an end to her. Vice
is her own proper evil; and if she cannot be destroyed by
that, she cannot be destroyed by any other. Yet Plato has
acknowledged that the soul may be so overgrown by the in-
crustations of earth as to lose her original form; and in the
Timaeus he recognizes more strongly than in the Republic
the influence which the body has over the mind, denying even
the voluntariness of human actions, on the ground that they
proceed from physical states (Tim. 86, 87). In the Republic, as
elsewhere, he wavers between the original soul which has to
be restored, and the character which is developed by training
and education
The vision of another world is ascribed to Er, the son of Arme-
nius, who is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been
Zoroaster. The tale has certainly an oriental character, and
may be compared with the pilgrimages of the soul in the Zend
Avesta (cp. Haug, Avesta, p. 197). But no trace of acquaintance
with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato's writings, and there
is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pamphylian.
The philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed
from Zoroaster, and still less the myths of Plato.
The local arrangement of the vision is less distinct than that
of the Phaedrus and Phaedo. Astronomy is mingled with sym-
bolism and mythology ; the great sphere of heaven is represented
under the symbol of a cylinder or box, containing the seven or-
bits of the planets and the fixed stars ; this is suspended from
an axis or spindle which turns on the knees of Necessity ; the
revolutions of the seven orbits contained in the cylinder are
guided by the fates, and their harmonious motion produces
The description of the heavens. clxvii
the music of the spheres. Through the innermost or eighth Republic
.of these, which is the moon, is passed the spindle; but it is lNTROpUC
doubtful whether this is the continuation of the column of light, TION-
from which the pilgrims contemplate the heavens; the words
of Plato imply that they are connected, but not the same. The
column itself is clearly not of adamant. The spindle (which
is of adamant) is fastened to the ends of the chains which ex-
tend to the middle of the column of light — this column is said
to hold together the heaven; but whether it hangs from the
spindle, or is at right angles to it, is not explained. The cylinder
containing the orbits «of the stars is almost as much a symbol
as the figure of Necessity turning the spindle; — for the outer-
most rim is the sphere of the fixed stars, and nothing is said
about the intervals of space which divide the paths of the
stars in the heavens. The description is both a picture and
an orrery, and therefore is necessarily inconsistent with itself.
The column of light is not the Milky Way — which is neither
straight, nor like a rainbow — but the imaginary axis of the earth.
This is compared to the rainbow in respect not of form but
of colour, and not to the undergirders of a trireme, but to the
straight rope running from prow to stern in which the under-
girders meet.
The orrery or picture of the heavens given in the Republic
differs in its mode of representation from the circles of the
same and of the other in the Timaeus. In both the fixed stars
are distinguished • from the planets, and they move in orbits
without them, although in an opposite direction : in the Re-
public as in the Timaeus (40 B) they are all moving round the
axis of the world. But we are not certain that in the former
they are moving round the earth. No distinct mention is made
in the Republic of the circles of the same and other ; although
both in the Timaeus and in the Republic the motion of the
fixed stars is supposed to coincide with the motion of the whole.
The relative thickness of the rims is perhaps designed to ex-
press the relative distances of the planets.*- Plato probably
intended to represent the earth, from which Er and his com-
panions are viewing the heavens, as stationary in place ; but
whether or not herself revolving, unless this is implied in the
revolution of the axis, is uncertain (cp. Timaeus). The spectator
clxviii t The choice of the lots.
Republic may be supposed to look at the heavenly bodies, either from
INTRODUC- above or below. The earth is a sort of earth and heaven in
On6) iike tne heaven of the Phaedrus, on the back of which
the spectator goes out to take a peep at the stars and is borne
round in the revolution. There is no distinction between the
equator and the ecliptic. But Plato is no doubt led to imagine
that the planets have an opposite motion to that* of the fixed
stars, in order to account for their appearances in the heavens.
In the description of the meadow, and the retribution of the
good and evil after death, there are traces of Homer.
The description of the axis as a spindle, and of the heavenly
bodies as forming a whole, partly arises out of the attempt to
connect the motions of the heavenly bodies with the mytho-
logical image of the web, or weaving of the Fates. The giving
of the lots, the weaving of them, and the making of them irrever-
sible, which are ascribed to the three Fates— Lachesis, Clotho,
Atropos, are obviously derived from their names. The element
of chance in human life is indicated by the order of the lots.
But chance, however adverse, may be overcome by the wisdom
of man, if he knows how to choose aright; there is a worse
enemy to man than chance; this enemy is himself. He who
was moderately fortunate in the number of the lot — even the
very last comer— might have a good life if he chose with wisdom.
And as Plato does not like to make an assertion which is un-
proven, he more than confirms this statement a few sentences
afterwards by the example of Odysseus, who chose last. But
the virtue which is founded on habit is not sufficient to enable
a man to choose ; he must add to virtue knowledge, if he is to
act rightly when placed in new circumstances. The routine
of good actions and good habits is an inferior sort of goodness ;
and, as Coleridge says, 'Common sense is intolerable which is
not based on metaphysics/ so Plato would have said, 'Habit is
•worthless which is not based upon philosophy.'
The freedom of the will to refuse the evil and to choose the
good is distinctly Asserted. ' Virtue is free, and as a man honours
or dishonours her he will have more or less of her.' The life
of man is ' rounded ' by necessity ; there are circumstances prior
to birth which affect him (cp. Pol. 273 B). But within the walls of
necessity there is an open space in which he is his own master,
The credibility of the visions. clxix
and can study for himself the effects which the variously com- Republic
pounded gifts of nature or fortune have upon the soul, and act INTRODUC.
accordingly. All men cannot have the first choice in everything. TION-
But the lot of all men is good enough, if they choose wisely and
will live diligently.
The verisimilitude which is given to the pilgrimage of a
thousand years, by the intimation that Ardiaeus had lived a
thousand years before ; the coincidence of Er coming to life
on the twelfth day after he was supposed to have been dead
with the seven days which the pilgrims passed in the meadow,
and the four days during which they journeyed to the column
of light ; the precision with which the soul is mentioned who
chose the twentieth lot ; the passing remarks that there was
no definite character among the souls, and that the souls which
had chosen ill blamed any one rather than themselves ; or that
some of the souls drank more than was necessary of the waters
of Forgetfulness, while Er himself was hindered from drinking ;
the desire of Odysseus to rest at last, unlike the conception of
him in Dante and Tennyson ; the feigned ignorance of how Er
returned to the body, when the other souls went shooting like
stars to their birth, — add greatly to the probability of the narra-
tive. They are such touches of nature as the art of Defoe might
have introduced when he wished to win credibility for marvels
and apparitions.
There still remain to be considered some points which have
been intentionally reserved to the end : (I) the Janus-like
character of the Republic, which presents two faces— one an
Hellenic state, the other a kingdom of philosophers. Connected
with the latter of the two aspects are (II) the paradoxes of the
Republic, as they have been termed by Morgenstern: (a) the
community of property ; (£) of families ; (y) the rule of philo-
sophers ; (8) the analogy of the individual and the State, which,
like some other analogies in the Republic, is carried too far.
We may then proceed to consider (III) the subject of educa-
tion as conceived by Plato, bringing together in a general
view the education of youth and the education of after-life ;
(IV) we may note further some essential differences between
ancient and modern politics which are suggested by the Republic ;
clxx Spartan features of the Republic.
IKTRODUO- (V) we may compare the Politicus and the Laws ; (VI) we may
observe the influence exercised by Plato on his imitators ; and
(VII) take occasion to consider the nature and value of political,
and (VIII) of religious ideals.
I. Plato expressly says that he is intending to found an Hellenic
State (Book v. 470 E). Many of his regulations are character-
istically Spartan ; such as the prohibition of gold and silver, the
common meals of the men, the military training of the youth,
the gymnastic exercises of the women. The life of Sparta was
the life of a camp (Laws ii. 666 E), enforced even more rigidly in
time of peace than in war; the citizens of Sparta, like Plato's,
were forbidden to trade— they were to be soldiers and not shop-
keepers. Nowhere else in Greece was the individual so com-
pletely subjected to the State ; the time when he was to marry,
the education of his children, the clothes which he was to wear,
the food which he was to eat, were all prescribed by law. Some
of the best enactments in the Republic, such as the reverence
to be paid to parents and elders, and some of the worst, such
as the exposure of deformed children, are borrowed from the
practice of Sparta. The encouragement of friendships between
men and youths, or of men with one another, as affording in-
centives to bravery, is also Spartan ; in Sparta too a nearer
approach was made than in any other Greek State to equality of
the sexes, and to community of property ; and while there was
probably less of licentiousness in the sense of immorality, the
tie of marriage was regarded more lightly than in the rest of
Greece. The * suprema lex ' was the preservation of the family,
and the interest of the State. The coarse strength of a military
government was not favourable to purity and refinement; and
the excessive strictness of some regulations seems to have pro-
duced a reaction. Of all Hellenes the Spartans were most acces-
sible to bribery ; several of the greatest of them might be
. described in the words of Plato as having a ' fierce secret longing
after gold and silver.* Though not in the strict sense com-
munists, the principle of communism was maintained among
them in their division of lands, in their common meals, in their
slaves, and in the free use of one another's goods. Marriage was
a public institution : and the women were educated by the State,
and sang and danced in public with the men.
Spartan features of the Republic. clxxi
Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with INTRODUC-
which the magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music
and poetry; as in the Republic of Plato, the new-fangled poet
was to be expelled. Hymns to the Gods, which are the only
kind of music admitted into the ideal State, were the only kind
which was permitted at Sparta. The Spartans, though an un-
poetical race, were nevertheless lovers of poetry ; they had been
stirred by the Elegiac strains of Tyrtaeus, they had crowded
around Hippias to hear his recitals of Homer ; but in this they
resembled the citizens of the timocratic rather than of the ideal
State (548 E). The council of elder men also corresponds to the
Spartan gerousia ; and the freedom with which they are per-
mitted to judge about matters of detail agrees with what we are
told of that institution. Once more, the military rule of not
spoiling the dead or offering arms at the temples ; the modera-
tion in the pursuit of enemies ; the importance attached to the
physical well-being of the citizens ; the use of warfare for the
sake of defence rather than of aggression— are features probably
suggested by the spirit and practice of Sparta.
To the Spartan type the ideal State reverts in the first decline ;
and the character of the individual timocrat is borrowed from the
Spartan citizen. The love of Lacedaemon not only affected
Plato and Xenophon, but was shared by many undistinguished
Athenians ; there they seemed to find a principle which was
wanting in their own democracy. The cuKorr/u'a of the Spartans at-
tracted them, that is to say, not the goodness of their laws, but
the spirit of order and loyalty which prevailed. Fascinated by the
idea, citizens of Athens would imitate the Lacedaemonians in their
dress and manners ; they were known to the contemporaries ^
of Plato as 'the persons who had their ears bruised,' like the
Roundheads of the Commonwealth. The love of another church
or country when seen at a distance only, the longing for an
imaginary simplicity in civilized times, the fond desire of a past
which never has been, or of a future which never will be, — these
are aspirations of the human mind which are often felt among
ourselves. Such feelings meet with a response in the Republic
of Plato.
But there are other features of the Platonic Republic, as, for
example, the literary and philosophical education, and the grace
clxxii Hellenic feeling in Plato.
INTRODUC- and beauty of life, which are the reverse of Spartan. Plato
wishes to give his citizens a taste of Athenian freedom as well
as of Lacedaemonian discipline. His individual genius is purely
Athenian, although in theory he is a lover of Sparta; and he
is something more than either — he has also a true Hellenic
feeling. He is desirous of humanizing the wars of Hellenes
against one another; he acknowledges that the Delphian God
is the grand hereditary interpreter of all Hellas. The spirit of
harmony and the Dorian mode are to prevail, and the whole
State is to have an external beauty which is the reflex of the
harmony within. But he has not yet found out the truth which
he afterwards enunciated in the Laws (i. 628 D)— that he was a
better legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who
trained them for war. The citizens, as in other Hellenic States,
democratic as well as aristocratic, are really an upper class;
for, although no mention is made of slaves, the lower classes
are allowed to fade away into the distance, and are represented
in the individual by the passions. Plato has no idea either of
a social State in which all classes are harmonized, or of a federa-
tion of Hellas or the world in which different nations or States
have a place. His city is equipped for war rather than for peace,
and this would seem to be justified by the ordinary condition of
Hellenic States. The myth of the earth-born men is an embodi-
ment of the orthodox tradition of Hellas, and the allusion to the
four ages of the world is also sanctioned by the authority of
Hesiod and the poets. Thus we see that the Republic is partly
founded on the ideal of the old Greek polis, partly on the actual
circumstances of Hellas in that age. Plato, like the old painters,
j retains the traditional form, and like them he has also a vision of
a city in the clouds.
There is yet another thread which is interwoven in the texture
of the work ; for the Republic is not only a Dorian State, but a
Pythagorean league. The ' way of life ' which was connected with
the name of Pythagoras, like the Catholic monastic orders, showed
the power which the mind of an individual might exercise over
his contemporaries, and may have naturally suggested to Plato the
possibility of reviving such ' mediaeval institutions.' The Pytha-
goreans, like Plato, enforced a rule of life and a moral and in-
tellectual training. The influence ascribed to music, which to
The Pythagorean way of life. clxxiii
us seems exaggerated, is also a Pythagorean feature ; it is not to INTRODUC-
be regarded as representing the real influence of music in the
Greek world. More nearly than any other government of
Hellas, the Pythagorean league of three hundred was an aris-
tocracy of virtue. For once in the history of mankind the philo-
sophy of order or Kovpos, expressing and consequently enlisting
on its side the combined endeavours of the better part of the
people, obtained the management of public affairs and held
possession of it for a considerable time (until about B. c. 500).
Probably only in States prepared by Dorian institutions would
such a league have been possible. The rulers, like Plato's ^uXa/cey,
were required to submit to a severe training in order to prepare
the way for the education of the other members of the com-
munity. Long after the dissolution of the Order, eminent Pytha-
goreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum, retained their political
influence over the cities of Magna Graecia. There was much here
that was suggestive to the kindred spirit of Plato, who had
doubtless meditated deeply on the ' way of life of Pythagoras '
(Rep. x. 600 B) and his followers. Slight traces of Pythagorean-
ism are to be found in the mystical number of the State, in the
number which expresses the interval between the king and the
tyrant, in the doctrine of transmigration, in the music of the
spheres, as well as in the great though secondary importance
ascribed to mathematics in education.
But as in his philosophy, so also in the form of his State, he
goes far beyond the old Pythagoreans. He attempts a task really
impossible, which is to unite the past of Greek history with the
future of philosophy, analogous to that other impossibility, which
has often been the dream of Christendom, the attempt to unite
the past history of Europe with the kingdom of Christ. Nothing
actually existing in the world at all resembles Plato's ideal State ;
nor does he himself imagine that such a State is possible. This
he repeats again and again ; e. g. in the Republic (ix. sub fin.), or
in the Laws (Book v. 739), where, casting a glance back on the
Republic, he admits that the perfect state of communism and
philosophy was impossible in his own age, though still to be
retained as a pattern. The same doubt is implied in the earnest-
ness with which he argues in the Republic (v. 472 D) that ideals
are none the worse because they cannot be realized in fact, and
clxxiv
Was Plato a good citizen '?
- in the chorus of laughter, which like a breaking wave will, as
he anticipates, greet the mention of his proposals ; though
like other writers of fiction, he uses all his art to give reality to
his inventions. When asked how the ideal polity can come into
being, he answers ironically, ' When one son of a king becomes
a philosopher ' ; he designates the fiction of the earth-born men
as ' a noble lie ' ; and when the structure is finally complete, he
fairly tells you that his Republic is a vision only, which in some
sense may have reality, but not in the vulgar one of a reign of
philosophers upon earth. It has been said that Plato flies as
well as walks, but this falls short of the truth ; for he flies and
walks at the same time, and is in the air and on firm ground in
successive instants.
Niebuhr has asked a trifling question, which may be briefly
noticed in this place— Was Plato a good citizen ? If by this is
meant, Was he loyal to Athenian institutions ?— he can hardly be
said to be the friend of democracy : but neither is he the friend
of any other existing form of government ; all of them he re-
garded as ' states of faction ' (Laws viii. 832 C) ; none attained to
his ideal of a voluntary rule over voluntary subjects, which seems
indeed more nearly to describe democracy than any other ; and
the worst of them is tyranny. The truth is, that the question has
hardly any meaning when applied to a great philosopher whose
writings are not meant for a particular age and country, but for
all time and all mankind. The decline of Athenian politics was
probably the motive which led Plato to frame an ideal State, and
the Republic may be regarded as reflecting the departing glory
of Hellas. As well might we complain of St. Augustine, whose
great work ' The City of God ' originated in a similar motive, for
not being loyal to the Roman Empire. Even a nearer parallel
might be afforded by the first Christians, who cannot fairly
be charged with being bad citizens because, though 'subject to
the higher powers,' they were looking forward to a city which is
in heaven.
II. The idea of the perfect State is full of paradox when
judged of according to the ordinary notions of mankind. The
paradoxes of one age have been said' to become the common-
places of the next ; but the paradoxes of Plato are at least as
paradoxical to us as they were to his contemporaries. The
The community of property. clxxv
modern world has either sneered at them as absurd, or de-
nounced them as unnatural and immoral ; men have been pleased
to find in Aristotle's criticisms of them the anticipation of their
own good sense. The wealthy and cultivated classes have dis-
liked and also dreaded them ; they have pointed with satisfaction
to the failure of efforts to realize them in practice. Yet since
they are the thoughts of one of the greatest of human intelli-
gences, and of one who has done most to elevate morality and
religion, they seem to deserve a better treatment at our hands.
We may have to address the public, as Plato does poetry, and
assure them that we mean no harm to existing institutions.
There are serious errors which have a side of truth and which
therefore may fairly demand a careful consideration : there are
truths mixed with error of which we may indeed say, * The half is
better than the whole.' Yet 'the half may be an important con-
tribution to the study of human nature.
(a) The first paradox is the community of goods, which is
mentioned slightly at the end of the third Book, and seemingly,
as Aristotle observes, is confined to the guardians ; at least no
mention is made of the other classes. But the omission is not
of any real significance, and probably arises out of the plan of
the work, which prevents the writer from entering into details.
Aristotle censures the community of property much in the
spirit of modern political economy, as tending to repress in-
dustry, and as doing away with the spirit of benevolence.
Modern writers almost refuse to consider the subject, which is
supposed to have been long ago settled by the common, opinion
of mankind. But it must be remembered that the sacredness of
property is a notion far more fixed in modern than in ancient
times. The world has grown older, and is therefore more con-
servative. Primitive society offered many examples of land held
in common, either by a tribe or by a township, and such may
probably have been the original form of landed tenure. Ancient
legislators had invented various modes of dividing and preserving
the divisions of land among the citizens ; according to Aristotle
there were nations who held the land in common and divided
the produce, and there were others who divided the land and
stored the produce in common. The evils of debt and the in-
equality of property were far greater in ancient than in modern
clxxvi The community of property.
INTRODUC- times, and the accidents to which property was subject from war,
TION. t t ...
or revolution, or taxation, or other legislative interference, were
also greater. All these circumstances gave property a less fixed
and sacred character. The early Christians are believed to have
held their property in common, and the principle is sanctioned
by the words of Christ himself, and has been maintained as a
counsel of perfection in almost all ages of the Church. Nor have
there been wanting instances of modern enthusiasts who have
made a religion of communism ; in every age of religious excite-
ment notions like Wycliffe's ' inheritance of grace ' have tended
to prevail. A like spirit, but fiercer and more violent, has ap-
peared in politics. ' The preparation of the Gospel of peace ' soon
becomes the red flag of Republicanism.
We can hardly judge what effect Plato's views would have
upon his own contemporaries ; they would perhaps have seemed
to them only an exaggeration of the Spartan commonwealth.
Even modern writers would acknowledge that the right of private
property is based on expediency, and may be interfered with in
a variety of ways for the public good. Any other mode of vesting
property which was found to be more advantageous, would in
time acquire the same basis of right ; ' the most useful,' in Plato's
words, 'would be the most sacred.' The lawyers and ecclesi-
astics of former ages would have spoken of property as a sacred
institution. But they only meant by such language to oppose the
greatest amount of resistance to any invasion of the rights of in-
dividuals and of the Church.
When we consider the question, without any fear of immediate
application to practice, in the spirit of Plato's Republic, are we
quite sure that the received notions of property are the best?
Is the distribution of wealth which is customary in civilized
countries the most favourable that can be conceived for the
education and development of the mass of mankind ? Can * the
spectator of all time and all existence* be quite convinced that
one or two thousand years hence, great changes will not have
taken place in the rights of property, or even that the very notion
of property, beyond what is necessary for personal maintenance,
may not have disappeared ? This was a distinction familiar to
Aristotle, though likely to be laughed at among ourselves. Such
a change would not be greater than some other changes through
The community of property. clxxvii
which the world has passed in the transition from ancient to
modern society, for example, the emancipation of the serfs in
Russia, or the abolition of slavery in America and the West
Indies ; and not so great as the difference which separates the
Eastern village community from the Western world. To accom-
plish such a revolution in the course of a few centuries, would
imply a rate of progress not more rapid than has actually taken
place during the last fifty or sixty years. The kingdom of Japan
underwent more change in five or six years than Europe in five
or six hundred. Many opinions and beliefs which have been
cherished among ourselves quite as strongly as the sacredness of
property have passed away ; and the most untenable propositions
respecting the right of bequests or entail have been maintained
with as much fervour as the most moderate. Some one will be
heard to ask whether a state of society can be final in which the
interests of thousands are perilled on the life or character of a
single person. And many will indulge the hope that our present
condition may, after all, be only transitional, and may conduct to
a higher, in which property, besides ministering to the enjoyment
of the few, may also furnish the means of the highest culture to
all, and will be a greater benefit to the public generally, and also
more under the control of public authority. There may come a
time when the saying, ' Have I not a right to do what I will with
my own ? ' will appear to be a barbarous relic of individualism ; —
when the possession of a part may be a greater blessing to each
and all than the possession of the whole is now to any one.
Such reflections appear visionary to the eye of the practical
statesman, but they are within the range of possibility to the
philosopher. He can imagine that in some distant age or clime,
and through the influence of some individual, the notion of com-
mon property may or might have sunk as deep into the heart of
a race, and have become as fixed to them, as private property
is to ourselves. He knows that this latter institution is not more
than four or five thousand years old : may not the end revert to
the beginning? In our own age even Utopias affect the spirit of
legislation, and an abstract idea may exercise a great influence on
practical politics.
The objections that would be generally urged against Plato's
community of property, are the old ones of Aristotle, that motives
n
clxxviii The community of property,
INTRODUC- for exertion would be taken away, and that disputes would arise
when each was dependent upon all. Every man would produce
as little and consume as much as he liked. The experience of
civilized nations has hitherto been adverse to Socialism. The
effort is too great for human nature ; men try to live in common,
but the personal feeling is always breaking in. On the other
hand it may be doubted whether our present notions of property
are not conventional, for they differ in different countries and
in different states of society. We boast of an individualism
which is not freedom, but rather an artificial result of the in-
dustrial state of modern Europe. The individual is nominally
free, but he is also powerless in a world bound hand and foot
in the chains of economic necessity. Even if we cannot expect
the mass of mankind to become disinterested, at any rate we
observe in them a power of organization which fifty years ago
would never have been suspected. The same forces which have
revolutionized the political system of Europe, may effect a similar
change in the social and industrial relations of mankind. And
if we suppose the influence of some good as well as neutral
motives working in the community, there will be no absurdity
in expecting that the mass of mankind having power, and
becoming enlightened about the higher possibilities of human
life, when they learn how much more is attainable for all than
is at present the possession of a favoured few, may pursue the
common interest with an intelligence and persistency which man-
kind have hitherto never seen.
Now that the world has once been set in motion, and is no
longer held fast under the tyranny of custom and ignorance ; now
that criticism has pierced the veil of tradition and the past no
longer overpowers the present, — the progress of civilization may
be expected to be far greater and swifter than heretofore. Even
at our present rate of speed the point at which we may arrive
in two or three generations is beyond the power of imagination
to foresee. There are forces in the world which work, not in an
arithmetical, but in a geometrical ratio of increase. Education, to
use the expression of Plato, moves like a wheel with an ever-
multiplying rapidity. Nor can we say how great may be its
influence, when it becomes universal, — when it has been in-
herited by many generations,— when it is freed from the trammels
The community of wives and children. clxxix
of superstition and rightly adapted to the wants and capacities
of different classes of men and women. Neither do we know
how much more the co-operation of minds or of hands may be
capable of accomplishing, whether in labour or in study. The
resources of the natural sciences are not half-developed as yet ;
the soil of the earth, instead of growing more barren, may become
many times more fertile than hitherto ; the uses of machinery
far greater, and also more minute than at present. New secrets
of physiology may be revealed, deeply affecting human nature
in its innermost recesses. The standard of health may be raised
and the lives of men prolonged by sanitary and medical know-
ledge. There may be peace, there may be leisure, there may
be innocent refreshments of many kinds. The ever-increasing
power of locomotion may join the extremes of earth. There
may be mysterious workings of the human mind, such as occur
only at great crises of history. The East and the West may meet
together, and all nations may contribute their thoughts and their
experience to the common stock of humanity. Many other ele-
ments enter into a speculation of this kind. But it is better to
make an end of them. For such reflections appear to the
majority far-fetched, and to men of science, commonplace.
(j3) Neither to the mind of Plato nor of Aristotle did the doctrine
of community of property present at all the same difficulty, or
appear to be the same violation of the common Hellenic senti-
ment, as the community of wives and children. This paradox
he prefaces by another proposal, that the occupations of men and
women shall be the same, and that to this end they shall have
a common training and education. Male and female animals have
the same pursuits — why not also the two sexes of man ?
But have we not here fallen into a contradiction ? for we were
saying that different natures should have different pursuits. How
then can men and women have the same ? And is not the pro-*
posal inconsistent with our notion of the division of labour ? —
These objections are no sooner raised than answered; for, ac-
cording to Plato, there is no organic difference between men and
women, but only the accidental one that men beget and women
bear children. Following the analogy of the other animals, he
contends that all natural gifts are scattered about indifferently
among both sexes, though there may be a superiority of degree
n 2
clxxx The community of wives and children.
INTRODUC- on the part of the men. The objection on the score of decency
to their taking part in the same gymnastic exercises, is met by
Plato's assertion that the existing feeling is a matter of habit.
That Plato should have emancipated himself from the ideas of
his own country and from, the example of the East, shows a
wonderful independence of mind. He is conscious that women
are half the human race, in some respects the more important half
(Laws vi. 781 B) ; and for the sake both of men and women he
desires to raise the woman to a higher level of existence. He
brings, not sentiment, but philosophy to bear upon a question
which both in ancient and modern times has been chiefly re-
garded in the light of custom or feeling. The Greeks had noble
conceptions of womanhood in the goddesses Athene and Artemis,
and in the heroines Antigone and Andromache. But these ideals
had no counterpart in actual life. The Athenian woman was in no
way the equal of her husband ; she was not the entertainer of his
guests or the mistress of his house, but only his housekeeper and
the mother of his children. She took no part in military or politi-
cal matters ; nor is there any instance in the later ages of Greece
of a woman becoming famous in literature. ' Hers is the greatest
glory who has the least renown among men,' is the historian's
conception of feminine excellence. A very different ideal of
womanhood is held up by Plato to the world ; she is to be the
companion of the man, and to share with him in the toils of war
and in the cares of government. She is to be similarly trained
both in bodily and mental exercises. She is to lose as far as
possible the incidents of maternity and the characteristics of the
female sex.
The modern antagonist of the equality of the sexes would argue
that the differences between men and women are not confined to
the single point urged by Plato ; that sensibility, gentleness, grace,
are the qualities of women, while energy, strength, higher intelli-
gence, are to be looked for in men. And the criticism is just :
the differences affect the whole nature, and are not, as Plato
supposes, confined to a single point. But neither can we say how
far these differences are due to education and the opinions of
mankind, or physically inherited from the habits and opinions of
former generations. Women have been always taught, not
exactly that they are slaves, but that they are in an inferior
The community of wives and children. clxxxi
position, which is also supposed to have compensating advantages ;
and to this position they have conformed. It is also true that the
physical form may easily change in the course of generations
through the mode of life ; and the weakness or delicacy, which
was once a matter of opinion, may become a physical fact. The
characteristics of sex vary greatly in different countries arid ranks
of society, and at different ages in the same individuals. Plato
may have been right in denying that there was any ultimate
difference in the sexes of man other than that which exists in
animals, because all other differences may be conceived to dis-
appear in other states of society, or under different circumstances
of life and training.
The first wave having been passed, we proceed to the second —
community of wives and children. ' Is it possible ? Is it desir-
able ? ' For, as Glaucon intimates, and as we far more strongly
insist, ' Great doubts may be entertained about both these points.'
Any free discussion of the question is impossible, and mankind
are perhaps right in not allowing the ultimate bases of social life
to be examined. Few of us can safely enquire into the things
which nature hides, any more than we can dissect our own bodies.
Still, the manner in which Plato arrived at his conclusions should
be considered. For here, as Mr. Grote has remarked, is a
wonderful thing, that one of the wisest and best of men should
have entertained ideas of morality which are wholly at variance
with our own. And if we would do Plato justice, we must
examine carefully the character of his proposals. First, we may
observe that the relations of the sexes supposed by him are the
reverse of licentious : he seems rather to aim at an impossible
strictness. Secondly, he conceives the family to be the natural
enemy of the state ; and he entertains the serious hope that an
universal brotherhood may take the place of private interests—
an aspiration which, although not justified by experience, has
possessed many noble minds. On the other hand, there is no
sentiment or imagination in the connections which men and
women are supposed by him to form ; human beings return to
the level of the animals, neither exalting to heaven, nor yet
abusing the natural instincts. All that world of poetry and fancy
which the passion of love has called forth in modern literature
and romance would have been banished by Plato. The arrange-
clxxxii The community of wives and children.
IHTRQDUC- ments of marriage in the Republic are directed to one object—
the improvement of the race. In successive generations a great
development both of bodily and mental qualities might be pos-
sible. The analogy of animals tends to show that mankind can.
within certain limits receive a change of nature. And as in
animals we should commonly choose the best for breeding, and
destroy the others, so there must be a selection made of the
human beings whose lives are worthy to be preserved.
. We start back horrified from this Platonic ideal, in the belief,
first, that the higher feelings of humanity are far too strong to be
crushed out ; secondly, that if the plan could be carried into
execution we should be poorly recompensed by improvements in
the breed for the loss of the best things in life. The greatest
regard for the weakest and meanest of human beings— the infant,
the criminal, the insane, the idiot, truly seems to us one of the
noblest results of Christianity. We have learned, though as yet
imperfectly, that the individual man has an endless value in the
sight of God, and that we honour Him when we honour the
darkened and disfigured image of Him (cp. Laws xi. 931 A). This
is the lesson which Christ taught in a parable when He said,
' Their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is
in heaven.' Such lessons are only partially realized in any age ;
they were foreign to the age of Plato, as they have very different
degrees of strength in different countries or ages of the Christian
world. To the Greek the family was a religious and customary
institution binding the members together by a tie inferior in
strength to that of friendship, and having a less solemn and
sacred sound than that of country. The relationship which
existed on the lower level of custom, Plato imagined that he was
raising to the higher level of nature and reason ; while from the
modern and Christian point of view we regard him as sanctioning
murder and destroying the first principles of morality.
The great error in these and similar speculations is that the
difference between man and the animals is forgotten in them. The
human being is regarded with the eye of a dog- or bird-fancier
(v. 459 A), or at best of a slave-owner ; the higher or human
qualities are left out. The breeder of animals aims chiefly at size
or speed or strength ; in a few cases at courage or temper ; most
often the fitness of the animal for food is the great desideratum.
The community of wives and children. clxxxiii
But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for their superiority INTRODUC-
TION.
in fighting or in running or in drawing carts. Neither does the
improvement of the human race consist merely in the increase of
the bones and flesh, but in the growth and enlightenment of the
mind. Hence there must be ' a marriage of true minds ' as well as
of bodies, of imagination and reason as well as of lusts and instincts.
Men and women without feeling or imagination are justly called
brutes ; yet Plato takes away these qualities and puts nothing in
their place, not even the desire of a noble offspring, since parents
are not to know their own children. The most important transac-
tion of social life, he who is the idealist philosopher converts into
the most brutal. For the pair are to have no relation to one
another, except at the hymeneal festival ; their children are not
theirs, but the state's ; nor is any tie of affection to unite them.
Yet here the analogy of the animals might have saved Plato from
a gigantic error, if he had ' not lost sight of his own illustration '
(ii. 375 D). For the ' nobler sort of birds and beasts ' (v. 459 A)
nourish and protect their offspring and are faithful to one another.
An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while ' to try and place
life on a physical basis.' But should not life rest on the moral
rather than upon the physical? The higher comes first, then
the lower ; first the human and rational, afterwards the animal.
Yet they are not absolutely divided ; and in times of sickness or
moments of self-indulgence they seem to be only different aspects
of a common human nature which includes them both. Neither is
the moral the limit of the physical, but the expansion and enlarge-
ment of it, — the highest form which the physical is capable of
receiving. As Plato would say, the body does not take care of the
body, and still less of the mind, but the mind takes care of both.
In all human action not that which is common to man and the
animals is the characteristic element, but that which distinguishes
him from them. Even if we admit the physical basis, and resolve
all virtue into health of body — ' lafagon que notre sang circule,' still
on merely physical grounds we must come back to ideas. Mind
and reason and duty and conscience, under these or other names,
are always reappearing. There cannot be health of body without
health of mind ; nor health of mind without the sense of duty and
the love of truth (cp. Charm. 156 D, E).
That the greatest of ancient philosophers should in his regulations
clxxxiv The community of wives and children.
INTRODUC- about marriage have fallen into the error of separating body and
mind, does indeed appear surprising. Yet the wonder is not
so much that Plato should have entertained ideas of morality
which to our own age are revolting, but that he should have con-
tradicted himself to an extent which is hardly credible, falling
in an instant from the heaven of idealism into the crudest
animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift of reflection, he
appears to have thought out a subject about which he had
better have followed the enlightened feeling of his own age. The
general sentiment of Hellas was opposed to his monstrous fancy.
The old poets, and in later time the tragedians, showed no want of
respect for the family, on which much of their religion was based.
But the example of Sparta, and perhaps in some degree the
tendency to defy public opinion, seems to have misled him. He
will make one family out of all the families of the state. He will
select the finest specimens of men and women and breed from
these only.
Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part
of human nature will from time to time assert itself in the disguise
of philosophy as well as of poetry), and also because any departure
from established morality, even where this is not intended, is apt
to be unsettling, it may be worth while to draw out a little more
at length the objections to the Platonic marriage. In the first
place, history shows that wherever polygamy has been largely
allowed the race has deteriorated. One man to one woman is the
law of God and nature. Nearly all the civilized peoples of the
world at some period before the age of written records, have
become monogamists ; and the step when once taken has never
been retraced. The exceptions occurring among Brahmins or
Mahometans or the ancient Persians, are of that sort which may be
said to prove the rule. The connexions formed between superior
and inferior races hardly ever produce a noble offspring, because
they are licentious; and because the children in such cases
usually despise the mother and are neglected by the father who
is ashamed of them. Barbarous nations when they are introduced
by Europeans to vice die out ; polygamist peoples either import
and adopt children from other countries, or dwindle in numbers,
or both. Dynasties and aristocracies which have disregarded the
laws of nature have decreased in numbers and degenerated in
The community of wives and children. clxxxv
stature ; ' manages de convenance ' leave their enfeebling stamp
on the offspring of them (cp. King Lear, Act i. Sc. 2). The
marriage of near relations, or the marrying in and in of the same
family tends constantly to weakness or idiocy in the children,
sometimes assuming the form as they grow older of passionate
licentiousness. The common prostitute rarely has any offspring.
By such unmistakable evidence is the authority of morality
asserted in the relations of the sexes : and so many more elements
enter into this ' mystery ' than are dreamed of by Plato and some
other philosophers.
Recent enquirers have indeed arrived at the conclusion that
among primitive tribes there existed a community of wives as
of property, and that the captive taken by the spear was the
only wife or slave whom any man was permitted to call his own.
The partial existence of such customs among some of the lower
races of man, and the survival of peculiar ceremonies in the
marriages of some civilized nations, are thought to furnish a
proof of similar institutions having been once universal. There
can be no question that the study .of anthropology has consider-
ably changed our views respecting the first appearance of man
upon the earth. We know more about the aborigines of the
world than formerly, but our increasing knowledge shows above
all things how little we know. With all the helps which written
monuments afford, we do but faintly realize the condition of man
two thousand or three thousand years ago. Of what his condition
was when removed to a distance 200,000 or 300,000 years, when
the majority of mankind were lower and nearer the animals than
any tribe now existing upon the earth, we cannot even entertain
conjecture. Plato (Laws iii. 676 foil.) and Aristotle (Metaph. xi. 8,
§§ 19,20) may have been more right than we imagine in supposing
that some forms of civilization were discovered and lost several
times over. If we cannot argue that all barbarism is a degraded
civilization, neither can we set any limits to the depth of degrada-
tion to which the human race may sink through war, disease, or
isolation. And if we are to draw inferences about the origin
of marriage from the practice of barbarous nations, we should
also consider the remoter analogy of the animals. Many birds
and animals, especially the carnivorous, have only one mate, and
the love and care of offspring which seems to be natural is in-
clxxxvi The community of wives and children.
INTRODUC- consistent with the primitive theory of marriage. If we go back
to an imaginary state in which men were almost animals and
the companions of them, we have as much right to argue from
what is animal to what is human as from the barbarous to the
civilized man. The record of animal life on the globe is frag-
mentary,— the connecting links are wanting and cannot be sup-
plied; the record of social life is still more fragmentary and
precarious. Even if we admit that our first ancestors had no
such institution as marriage, still the stages by which men passed
from outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of China,
Assyria, and Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly
unknown to us.
Such speculations are apt to be unsettling, because they seem
to show that an institution which was thought to be a revelation
from heaven, is only the growth of history and experience. We
ask what is the origin of marriage, and we are told that like
the right of property, after many wars and contests, it has
gradually arisen out of the selfishness of barbarians. We stand
face to face with human nature in its primitive nakedness. We
are compelled to accept, not the highest, but the lowest account
of the origin of human society. But on the other hand we may
truly say that every step in human progress has been in the
same direction, and that in the course of ages the idea of marriage
and of the family has been more and more defined and conse-
crated. The civilized East is immeasurably in advance of any
savage tribes ; the Greeks and Romans have improved upon the
East; the Christian nations have been stricter in their views
of the marriage relation than any of the ancients. In this as
in so many other things, instead of looking back with regret to
the past, we should look forward with hope to the future. We
must consecrate that which we believe to be the most holy, and
that ' which is the most holy will be the most useful.' There is
more reason for maintaining the sacredness of the marriage tie,
when we see the benefit of it, than when we only felt a vague
religious horror about the violation of it. But in all times of
transition, when established beliefs are being undermined, there
is a danger that in the passage from the old to the new we may
insensibly let go the moral principle, finding an excuse for listen-
ing to the voice of passion in the uncertainty of knowledge, or the
The community of wives and children. clxxxvii
fluctuations of opinion. And there are many persons in our own INTRODUC-
day who, enlightened by the study of anthropology, and fascinated
by what is new and strange, some using the language of fear,
others of hope, are inclined to believe that a time will come when
through the self-assertion of women, or the rebellious spirit of
children, by the analysis of human relations, or by the force of
outward circumstances, the ties of family life may be broken or
greatly relaxed. They point to societies in America and else-
where which tend to show that the destruction of the family need
not necessarily involve the overthrow of all morality. Whatever
we may think of such speculations, we can hardly deny that they
have been more rife in this generation than in any other; and
whither they are tending, who can predict ?
To the doubts and queries raised by these 'social reformers'
respecting the relation of the sexes and the moral nature of man,
there is a sufficient answer, if any is needed. The difference be-
tween them and us is really one of fact. They are speaking of man
as they wish or fancy him to be, but we are speaking of him as he
is. They isolate the animal part of his nature ; we regard him as a
creature having many sides, or aspects, moving between good and
evil, striving to rise above himself and to become * a little lower
than the angels.' We also, to use a Platonic formula, are not
ignorant of the dissatisfactions and incompatibilities of family life,
of the meannesses of trade, of the flatteries of one class of society
by another, of the impediments which the family throws in the way
of lofty aims and aspirations. But we are conscious that there are
evils and dangers in the background greater still, which are not
appreciated, because they are either concealed or suppressed.
What a condition of man would that be, in which human passions
were controlled by no authority, divine or human, in which there
was no shame or decency, no higher affection overcoming or
^sanctifying the natural instincts, but simply a rule of health ! Is it
for this that we are asked to throw away the civilization which is
the growth of ages ?
For strength and health are not the only qualities to be desired ;
there are the more important considerations of mind and character
and soul. We know how human nature may be degraded ; we
do not know how by artificial means any improvement in the
breed can be effected. The problem is a complex onej for if we
clxxxviii The community of wives and children.
INTRODUC- go back only four steps (and these at least enter into the com-
position of a child), there are commonly thirty progenitors to
be taken into account. Many curious facts, rarely admitting of
proof, are told us respecting the inheritance of disease or character
from a remote ancestor. We can trace the physical resemblances
of parents and children in the same family —
' Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat ' ;
but scarcely less often the differences which distinguish children
both from their parents and from one another. We are told
of similar mental peculiarities running in families, and again
of a tendency, as in the animals, to revert to a common or
original stock. But we have a difficulty in distinguishing what
is a true inheritance of genius or other qualities, and what is
mere imitation or the result of similar circumstances. Great
men and great women have rarely had great fathers and mothers.
Nothing that we know of in the circumstances of their birth or
lineage will explain their appearance. Of the English poets of
the last and two preceding centuries scarcely a descendant
remains, — none have ever been distinguished. So deeply has
nature hidden her secret, and so ridiculous is the fancy which
has been entertained by some that we might in time by suitable
marriage arrangements or, as Plato would have said, 'by an
ingenious system of lots/ produce a Shakespeare or a Milton.
Even supposing that we could breed men having the tenacity
of bulldogs, or, like the Spartans, ' lacking the wit to run away
in battle,' would the world be any the better? Many of the
noblest specimens of the human race have been among the
weakest physically. Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own Newton,
would have been exposed at Sparta; and some of the fairest
and strongest men and women have been among the wickedest
and worst. Not by the Platonic device of uniting the strong
and fair with the strong and fair, regardless of sentiment anda
morality, nor yet by his other device of combining dissimilar
natures (Statesman 310 A), have mankind gradually passed from
the brutality and licentiousness of primitive marriage to marriage
Christian and civilized.
Few persons would deny that we bring into the world an
inheritance of mental and physical qualities derived first from
our parents, or through them from some remoter ancestor,
The community of wives and children. clxxxix
secondly from our race, thirdly from the general condition of INTRODUC-
mankind into which we are born. Nothing is commoner than
the remark, that ' So and so is like his father or his uncle ' ;
and an aged person may not unfrequently note a resemblance
in a youth to a long-forgotten ancestor, observing that 'Nature
sometimes skips a generation.' It may be true also, that if we
knew more about our ancestors, these similarities would be even
more striking to us. Admitting the facts which are thus described
in a popular way, we may however remark that there is no
method of difference by which they can be defined or estimated,
and that they constitute only a small part of each individual. The
doctrine of heredity may seem to take out of our hands the conduct
of our own lives, but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really
terrible to us. For what we have received from our ancestors is
only a fraction of what we are, or may become. The knowledge
that drunkenness or insanity has been prevalent in a family may
be the best safeguard against their recurrence in a future genera-
tion. The parent will be most awake to the vices or diseases
in his child of which he is most sensible within himself. The
whole of life may be directed to their prevention or cure. The
traces of consumption may become fainter, or be wholly effaced :
the inherent tendency to vice or crime may be eradicated. And
so heredity, from being a curse, may become a blessing. We
acknowledge that in the matter of our birth, as in our nature
generally, there are previous circumstances which affect us. But
upon this platform of circumstances or within this wall of neces-
sity, we have still the power of creating a life for ourselves by the
informing energy of the human will.
There is another aspect of the marriage question to which Plato
is a stranger. All the children born in his state are foundlings.
It never occurred to him that the greater part of them, according
to universal experience, would have perished. For children can
only be brought up in families. There is a subtle sympathy
between the mother and the child which cannot be supplied by
other mothers, or by ' strong nurses one or more ' (Laws vii. 789 E).
If Plato's 'pen' was as fatal as the Creches of Paris, or the
foundling hospital of Dublin, more than nine-tenths of his children
would have perished. There would have been no need to expose
or put out of the way the weaklier children, for they would have
cxc The community of wives and children.
INTRODUC- died of themselves. So emphatically does nature protest against
the destruction of the family.
What Plato had heard or seen of Sparta was applied by him
in a mistaken way to his ideal commonwealth. He probably
observed that both the Spartan men and women were superior
in form and strength to the other Greeks ; and this superiority
he was disposed to attribute to the laws and customs relating
to marriage. He did not consider that the desire of a noble
offspring was a passion among the Spartans, or that their
physical superiority was to be attributed chiefly, not to their
marriage customs, but to their temperance and training. He
did not reflect that Sparta was great, not in consequence of the
relaxation of morality, but in spite of it, by virtue of a political
principle stronger far than existed in any other Grecian state.
Least of all did he observe that Sparta did not really produce
the finest specimens of the Greek race. The genius, the political
inspiration of Athens, the love of liberty — all that has made
Greece famous with posterity, were wanting among the Spartans.
They had no Themistocles, or Pericles, or Aeschylus, or Sopho-
cles, or Socrates, or Plato. The individual was not allowed
to appear above the state ; the laws were fixed, and he had no
business to alter or reform them. Yet whence has the progress
of cities and nations arisen, if not from remarkable individuals,
coming into the world we know not how, and from causes over
which we have no control? Something too much may have
been said in modern times of the value of individuality. But
we can hardly condemn too strongly a system which, instead of
fostering the scattered seeds or sparks of genius and character,
tends to smother and extinguish them.
Still, while condemning Plato, we must acknowledge that
neither Christianity, nor any other form of religion and society,
has hitherto been able to cope with this most difficult of social
problems, and that the side from which Plato regarded it is that
from which we turn away. Population is the most untameable
force in the political and social world. Do we not find, especi-
ally in large cities, that the greatest hindrance to the amelioration
of the poor is their improvidence in marriage? — a small fault
truly, if not involving endless consequences. There are whole
countries too, such as India, or, nearer home, Ireland, in which a
The community of wives and children. cxci
right solution of the marriage question seems to lie at the founda- INTRODUC-
tion of the happiness of the community. There are too many
people on a given space, or they marry too early and bring
into the world a sickly and half-developed offspring; or owing
to the very conditions of their existence, they become emaciated
and hand on a similar life to their descendants. But who can
oppose the voice of prudence to the ' mightiest passions of man-
kind ' (Laws viii. 835 C), especially when they have been licensed
by custom and religion ? In addition to the influences of educa-
tion, we seem to require some new principles of right and wrong
in these matters, some force of opinion, which may indeed be
already heard whispering in private, but has never affected the
moral sentiments of mankind in general. We unavoidably lose
sight of the principle of utility, just in that action of our lives
in which we have the most need of it. The influences which
we can bring to bear upon this question are chiefly indirect.
In a generation or two, education, emigration, improvements in
agriculture and manufactures, may have provided the solution.
The state physician hardly likes to probe the wound : it is beyond
his art ; a matter which he cannot safely let alone, but which he
dare not touch :
' We do but skin and film the ulcerous place.'
When again in private life we see a whole family one by one
dropping into the grave under the Ate of some inherited malady,
and the parents perhaps surviving them, do our minds ever
go back silently to that day twenty-five or thirty years before
on which under the fairest auspices, amid the rejoicings of
friends and acquaintances, a bride and bridegroom joined hands
with one another ? In making such a reflection we are not
opposing physical considerations to moral, but moral to physical ;
we are seeking to make the voice of reason heard, which drives
us back from the extravagance of sentimentalism on common
sense. The late Dr. Combe is said by his biographer to have
resisted the temptation to marriage, because he knew that he
was subject to hereditary consumption. One who deserved to
be called a man of genius, a friend of my youth, was in the habit
of wearing a black ribbon on his wrist, in order to remind him
that, being liable to outbreaks of insanity, he must not give way
to the natural impulses of affection : he died unmarried in a
cxcii The community of wives and children.
INTRODUC- lunatic asylum. These two little facts suggest the reflection that a
TION.
very few persons have done from a sense of duty what the rest of
mankind ought to have done under like circumstances, if they had
allowed themselves to think of all the misery which they were
about to bring into the world. If we could prevent such mar-
riages without any violation of feeling or propriety, we clearly
ought ; and the prohibition in the course of time would be pro-
tected by a ' horror naturalis ' similar to that which, in all civilized
ages and countries, has prevented the marriage of near relations
by blood. Mankind would have been the happier, if some things
which are now allowed had from the beginning been denied to
them ; if the sanction of religion could have prohibited practices
inimical to health ; if sanitary principles could in early ages have
been invested with a superstitious awe. But, living as we do far
on in the world's history, we are no longer able to stamp at once
with the impress of religion a new prohibition. A free agent can-
not have his fancies regulated by law ; and the execution of the
law would be rendered impossible, owing to the uncertainty of
the cases in which marriage was to be forbidden. Who can
weigh virtue, or even fortune against health, or moral and mental
qualities against bodily ? Who can measure probabilities against
certainties? There has been some good as well as evil in the
discipline of suffering; and there are diseases, such as con-
sumption, which have exercised a refining and softening in-
fluence on the character. Youth is too inexperienced to balance
such nice considerations ; parents do not often think of them, or
think of them too late. They are at a distance and may probably
be averted ; change of place, a new state of life, the interests of
a home may be the cure of them. So persons vainly reason when
their minds are already made up and their fortunes irrevocably
linked together. Nor is there any ground for supposing that
marriages are to any great extent influenced by reflections of
this sort, which seem unable to make any head against the
irresistible impulse of individual attachment.
Lastly, no one can have observed the first rising flood of the
passions in youth, the difficulty of regulating them, and the
effects on the whole mind and nature which follow from them,
the stimulus which is given to them by the imagination, without
feeling that there is something unsatisfactory in our method of
The community of women and children. cxciii
treating them. That the most important influence on human life Republic.
should be wholly left to chance or shrouded in mystery, and
instead of being disciplined or understood, should be required to
conform only to an external standard of propriety — cannot be
regarded by the philosopher as a safe or satisfactory condition of
human things. And still those who have the charge of youth may
find a way by watchfulness, by affection, by the manliness and
innocence of their own lives, by occasional hints, by general admo-
nitions which every one can apply for himself, to mitigate this
terrible evil which eats out the heart of individuals and corrupts
the moral sentiments of nations. In no duty towards others is
there more need of reticence and self-restraint. So great is the
danger lest he who would be the counsellor of another should
reveal the secret prematurely, lest he should get another too much
into his power, or fix the passing impression of evil by demanding
the confession of it.
Nor is Plato wrong in asserting that family attachments may
interfere with higher aims. If there have been some who 'to
party gave up what was meant for mankind/ there have cer-
tainly been others who to family gave up what was meant for
mankind or for their country. The cares of children, the
necessity of procuring money for their support, the flatteries
of the rich by the poor, the exclusiveness of caste, the pride
of birth or wealth, the tendency of family life* to divert men
from the pursuit of the ideal or the heroic, are as lowering in
our own age as in that of Plato. And if we prefer to look at
the gentle influences of home, the development of the affections,
the amenities of society, the devotion of one member of a family
for the good of the others, which form one side of the picture,
we must not quarrel with him, or perhaps ought rather to be
grateful to him, for having presented to us the reverse. Without
attempting to defend Plato on grounds of morality, we may allow
that there is an aspect of the world which has not unnaturally
led him into error.
We hardly appreciate the power which the idea of the State,
like all other abstract ideas, exercised over the mind of Plato.
To us the State seems to be built up out of the family, or some-
times to be the framework in which family and social life is
contained. But to Plato in his present mood of mind the family
o
cxciv The government of philosophers.
Republic, is only a disturbing influence which, instead of filling up, tends
to disarrange tne higher unity of the State. No organization
is needed except a political, which, regarded from another point
of view, is a military one. The State is all-sufficing for the wants
of man, and, like the idea of the Church in later ages, absorbs all
other desires and aifections. In time of war the thousand citizens
are to stand like a rampart impregnable against the world or the
Persian host ; in time of peace the preparation for war and their
duties to the State, which are also their duties to one another,
take up their whole life and time. The only other interest which
is allowed to them besides that of war, is the interest of philo-
sophy. When they are too old to be soldiers they are to retire
from active life and to have a second novitiate of study and
contemplation. There is an element of monasticism even in
Plato's communism. If he could have done without children,
he might have converted his Republic into a religious order.
Neither in the Laws (v. 739 B), when the daylight of common
sense breaks in upon him, does he retract his error. In the
state of which he would be the founder, there is no marrying
or giving in marriage : but because of the infirmity of mankind,
he condescends to allow the law of nature to prevail.
(y) But Plato has an equal, or, in his own estimation, even
greater paradox in reserve, which is summed up in the famous
text, 'Until kings are philosophers or philosophers are kings,
cities will never cease from ill.' And by philosophers he explains
himself to mean those who are capable of apprehending ideas,
especially the idea of good. To the attainment of this higher
knowledge the second education is directed. Through a process
of training which has already made them good citizens they
are now to be made good legislators. We find with some sur-
prise (not unlike the feeling which Aristotle in a well-known
passage describes the hearers of Plato's lectures as experiencing,
when they went to a discourse on the idea of good, expecting
to be instructed in moral truths, and received instead of them
arithmetical and mathematical formulae) that Plato does not
propose for his future legislators any study of finance or law
or military tactics, but only of abstract mathematics, as a pre-
paration for the still more abstract conception of good. We ask,
with Aristotle, What is the use of a man knowing the idea of
The government of philosophers. cxcv
good, if he does not know what is good for this individual, Republic.
this state, this condition of society ? We cannot understand
how Plato's legislators or guardians are to be fitted for their
work of statesmen by the study of the five mathematical sciences.
We vainly search in Plato's own writings for any explanation
of this seeming absurdity.
The discovery of a great metaphysical conception seems to
ravish the mind with a prophetic consciousness which takes
away the power of estimating its value. No metaphysical en-
quirer has ever fairly criticised his own speculations; in his
own judgment they have been above criticism; nor has he
understood that what to him seemed to be absolute truth may
reappear in the next generation as a form of logic or an in-
strument of thought. And posterity have also sometimes equally
misapprehended the real value of his speculations. They appear
to them to have contributed nothing to the stock of human
knowledge. The idea of good is apt to be regarded by the
modern thinker as an unmeaning abstraction ; but he forgets
that this abstraction is waiting ready for use, and will hereafter
be filled up by the divisions of knowledge. When mankind do
not as yet know that the world is subject to law, the introduc-
tion of the mere conception of law or design or final cause, and
the far-off anticipation of the harmony of knowledge, are great
steps onward. Even the crude generalization of the unity of
all things leads men to view the world with different eyes, and
may easily affect their conception of human life and of politics,
and also their own conduct and character (Tim. 90 A).1 We can
imagine how a great mind like that of Pericles might derive
elevation from his intercourse with Anaxagoras (Phaedr. 270 A).
To be struggling towards a higher but unattainable conception
is a more favourable intellectual condition than to rest satisfied
in a narrow portion of ascertained fact. And the earlier, which
have sometimes been the greater ideas of science, are often
lost sight of at a later period. How rarely can we say of any
modern enquirer in the magnificent language of Plato, that
* He is the spectator of all time and of all existence ! '
Nor is there anything unnatural in the hasty application of
these vast metaphysical conceptions to practical and political
life. In the first enthusiasm of ideas men are apt to see them
02
cxcvi The government of philosophers.
Republic, everywhere, and to apply them in the most remote sphere.
INTRODUC- They do not understand that the experience of ages is required
to enable them to fill up ' the intermediate axioms.' Plato him-
self seems to have imagined that the truths of psychology, like
those of astronomy and harmonics, would be arrived at by a
process of deduction, and that the method which he has pur-
sued in the Fourth Book, of inferring them from experience
and the use of language, was imperfect and only provisional.
But when, after having arrived at the idea of good, which is the
end of the science of dialectic, he is asked, What is the nature, and
what are the divisions of the science ? he refuses to answer, as
if intending by the refusal to intimate that the state of knowledge
which then existed was not such as would allow the philo-
sopher to enter into his final rest. The previous sciences must
first be studied, and will, we may add, continue to be studied
till the end of time, although in a sense different from any
^vhich Plato could have conceived. But we may observe,
that while he is aware of the vacancy of his own ideal, he is
full of enthusiasm in the contemplation of it. Looking into the
orb of light, he sees nothing, but he is warmed and elevated.
The Hebrew prophet believed that faith in God would enable
him to govern the world ; the Greek philosopher imagined
that contemplation of the good would make a legislator. There
is as much to be filled up in the one case as in the other, and
the one mode of conception is to the Israelite what the other
is to the Greek. Both find a repose in a divine perfection,
which, whether in a more personal or impersonal form, exists
without them and independently of them, as well as within
them.
There is no mention of the idea of good in the Timaeus, nor
of the divine Creator of the world in the Republic ; and we are
naturally led to ask in what relation they stand to one another.
Is God above or below the idea of good ? Or is the Idea of
Good another mode of conceiving God ? The latter appears to be
the truer answer. To the Greek philosopher the perfection
and unity of God was a far higher conception than his person-
ality, which he hardly found a word to express, and which to
him would have seemed to be borrowed from mythology. To
the Christian, on the other hand, or to the modern thinker in
The government of philosophers. cxcvii
general, it is difficult, if not impossible, to attach reality td Republic.
what he terms mere abstraction ; while to Plato this very ab- INTTRJ^UC"
straction is the truest and most real of all things. Hence, from
a difference in forms of thought, Plato appears to be resting
on a creation of his own mind only. But if we may be allowed
to paraphrase the idea of good by the words 'intelligent prin-
ciple of law and order in the universe, embracing equally man
and nature/ we begin to find a meeting-point between him and
ourselves.
The question whether the ruler or statesman should be a
philosopher is one that has not lost interest in modern times.
In most countries of Europe and Asia there has been some one
in the course of ages who has truly united the power of com-
mand with the power of thought and reflection, as there have
been also many false combinations of these qualities. Some
kind of speculative power is necessary both in practical and
political life ; like the rhetorician in the Phaedrus, men require
to have a conception of the varieties of human character, and
to be raised on great occasions above the commonplaces of
ordinary life. Yet the idea of the philosopher-statesman has
never been popular with the mass of mankind ; partly because
he cannot take the world into his confidence or make them
understand the motives from which he acts; and also because
they are jealous of a power which they do not understand.
The revolution which human nature desires to effect step by
step in many ages is likely to be precipitated by him in a single
year or life. They are afraid that in the pursuit of his greater
aims he may disregard the common feelings of humanity. He
is too apt to be looking into the distant future or back into the
remote past, and unable to see actions or events which, to use
an expression of Plato's, ' are tumbling out at his feet.' Besides,
as Plato would say, there are other corruptions of these philo-
sophical statesmen. Either 'the native hue of resolution is
sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,' and at the moment
when action above all things is required he is undecided, or
general principles are enunciated by him in order to cover
some change of policy ; or his ignorance of the world has
made him more easily fall a prey to the arts of others ; or in
some cases he has been converted into a courtier, who enjoys
cxcviii The government of philosophers.
Republic, the luxury of holding liberal opinions, but was never known to
Perf°rm a liberal action. No wonder that mankind have been in
the habit of calling statesmen of this class pedants, sophisters,
doctrinaires, visionaries. For, as we may be allowed to say, a
little parodying the words of Plato, ' they have seen bad imitations
of the philosopher-statesman.' But a man in whom the power
of thought and action are perfectly balanced, equal to the pre-
sent, reaching forward to the future, 'such a one/ ruling in a
constitutional state, ' they have never seen.'
But as the philosopher is apt to fail in the routine of political
life, so the ordinary statesman is also apt to fail in extraordinary
crises. When the face of the world is beginning to alter, and
thunder is heard in the distance, he is still guided by his old
maxims, and is the slave of his inveterate party prejudices ; he
cannot perceive the signs of the times; instead of looking for-
ward he looks back ; he learns nothing and forgets nothing ;
with ' wise saws and modern instances ' he would stem the
rising tide of revolution. He lives more and more within the
circle of his own party, as the world without him becomes
stronger. This seems to be the reason why the old order of
things makes so poor a figure when confronted with the new,
why churches can never reform, why most political changes
are made blindly and convulsively. The great crises in the
history of nations have often been met by an ecclesiastical
positiveness, and a more obstinate reassertion of principles
which have lost their hold upon a nation. The fixed ideas of
a reactionary statesman may be compared to madness ; they grow
upon him, and he becomes possessed by them ; no judgement of
others is ever admitted by him to be weighed in the balance
against his own.
(5) Plato, labouring under what, to modern readers, appears
to have been a confusion of ideas, assimilates the state to the
individual, and fails to distinguish Ethics from Politics. He
thinks that to be most of a state which is most like one
man, and in which the citizens have the greatest uniformity of
character. He does not see that the analogy is partly fal-
lacious, and that the will or character of a state or nation is
really the balance or rather the surplus of individual wills,
which are limited by the condition of having to act in common.
The State and the Individual. cxcix
The movement of a body of men can never have the pliancy Republic.
or facility of a single man ; the freedom of the individual, which INTRODUC-
J TION.
is always limited, becomes still more straitened when transferred
to a nation. The powers of action and feeling are necessarily
weaker and more balanced when they are diffused through
a community ; whence arises the often discussed question, ' Can
a nation, like an individual, have a conscience?' We hesitate
to say that the characters of nations are nothing more than
the sum of the characters of the individuals who compose
them ; because there may be tendencies in individuals which
react upon one another. A whole nation may be wiser than any
one man in it ; or may be animated by some common opinion
or feeling which could not equally have affected the mind of a
single person, or may have been inspired by a leader of genius to
perform acts more than human. Plato does not appear to have
analysed the complications which arise out of the collective
action of mankind. Neither is he capable of seeing that analo-
gies, though epecious as arguments, may often have no founda-
tion in fact, or of distinguishing between what is intelligible
or vividly present to the mind, and what is true. In this respect
he is far below Aristotle, who is comparatively seldom imposed
upon by false analogies. He cannot disentangle the arts from
the virtues — at least he is always arguing from one to the
other. His notion of music is transferred from harmony of
sounds to harmony of life: in this he is assisted by the am-
biguities of language as well as by the prevalence of Pythagorean
notions. And having once assimilated the state to the individual,
he imagines that he will find the succession of states paralleled
in the lives of individuals.
Still, through this fallacious medium, a real enlargement of
ideas is attained. When the virtues as yet presented no distinct
conception to the mind, a great advance was made by the com-
parison of them with the arts ; for virtue is partly art, and has
an outward form as well as an inward principle. The harmony
of music affords a lively image of the harmonies of the world and
of human life, and may be regarded as a splendid illustration
which was naturally mistaken for a real analogy. In the same
way the identification of ethics with politics has a tendency to
give definiteness to ethics, and also to elevate and ennoble men's
cc The Education of the Republic.
Republic, notions of the aims of government and of the duties of citizens ;
IN TION U° *°r ethics fr°m one point of view may be conceived as an idealized
law and politics ; and politics, as ethics reduced to the conditions
of human society. There have been evils which have arisen
out of the attempt to identify them, and this has led to the
separation or antagonism of them, which has been introduced
by modern political writers. But we may likewise feel that
something has been lost in their separation, and that the
ancient philosophers who estimated the moral and intellectual
wellbeing of mankind first, and the wealth of nations and indi-
viduals second, may have a salutary influence on the speculations
of modern times. Many political maxims originate in a reaction
against an opposite error; and when the errors against which
they were directed have passed away, they in turn become
errors.
III. Plato's views of education are in several respects re-
markable; like the rest of the Republic they are partly Greek
and partly ideal, beginning with the ordinary curriculum of the
Greek youth, and extending to after-life. Plato is the first writer
who distinctly says that education is to comprehend the whole
of life, and to be a preparation for another in which education
begins again (vi. 4980). This is the continuous thread which
runs through the Republic, and which more than any other of
his ideas admits of an application to modern life.
He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught ;
and he is disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that
the virtues are one and not many. He is not unwilling to
admit the sensible world into his scheme of truth. Nor does
he assert in the Republic the involuntariness of vice, which
is maintained by him in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Laws
(cp. Protag. 345 foil., 352, 355; Apol. 25 E; Gorg. 468, 509 E).
Nor do the so-called Platonic ideas recovered from a former
state of existence affect his theory of mental improvement. Still
we observe in him the remains of the old Socratic doctrine, that
true knowledge must be elicited from within, and is to be sought
for in ideas, not in particulars of sense. Education, as he says,
will implant a principle of intelligence which is better than ten
The Education of the Republic. cci
thousand eyes. The paradox that the virtues are one, and the Republic.
kindred notion that all virtue is knowledge, are not entirely re-
nounced ; the first is seen in the supremacy given to justice over
the rest ; the second in the tendency to absorb the moral virtues
in the intellectual, and to centre all goodness in the contemplation
of the idea of good. The world of sense is still depreciated and
identified with opinion, though admitted to be a shadow of the
true. In the Republic he is evidently impressed with the con-
viction that vice arises chiefly from ignorance and may be cured
by education ; the multitude are hardly to be deemed responsible
for what they do (v. 499 E). A faint allusion to the doctrine of
reminiscence occurs in the Tenth Book (621 A) ; but Plato's views
of education have no more real connection with a previous state
of existence than our own ; he only proposes to elicit from the
mind that which is there already. Education is represented by
him, not as the filling of a vessel, but as the turning the eye of
the soul towards the light.
He treats first of music or literature, which he divides into true
and false, and then goes on to gymnastics; of infancy in the
Republic he takes no notice, though in the Laws he gives sage
counsels about the nursing of children and the management of
the mothers, and would have an education which is even prior to
birth. But in the Republic he begins with the age at which the
child is capable of receiving ideas, and boldly asserts, in language
which sounds paradoxical to modern ears, that he must be taught
the false before he can learn the true. The modern and ancient
philosophical world are not agreed about truth and falsehood ; the
one identifies truth almost exclusively with fact, the other with
ideas. This is the difference between ourselves and Plato, which
is, however, partly a difference of words (cp. supra, p. xxxviii). For
we too should admit that a child must receive many lessons which
he imperfectly understands ; he must be taught some things in a
figure only, some too which he can hardly be expected to believe
when he grows older ; but we should limit the use of fiction by the
necessity of the case. Plato would draw the line differently \
according to him the aim of early education is not truth as a matter
of fact, but truth as a matter of principle ; the child is to be taught
first simple religious truths, and then simple moral truths, and
insensibly to learn the lesson of good manners and good taste. He
ccii The Education of the Republic.
Republic, would make an entire reformation of the old mythology; like
" Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is sensible of the deep chasm
which separates his own age from Homer and Hesiod, whom he
quotes and invests with an imaginary authority, but only for his
own purposes. The lusts and treacheries of the gods are to be
banished ; the terrors of the world below are to be dispelled ; the
misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is not to be a model for
youth. But there is another strain heard in Homer which may
teach our youth endurance; and something may be learnt in
medicine from the simple practice of the Homeric age. The
principles on which religion is to be based are two only : first, that
God is true ; secondly, that he is good. Modern and Christian
writers have often fallen short of these ; they can hardly be said
to have gone beyond them.
The young are to be brought up in happy surroundings, out of
the way of sights or sounds which may hurt the character or
vitiate the taste. They are to live in an atmosphere of health ; the
breeze is always to be wafting to them the impressions of truth
and goodness. Could such an education be realized, or if our
modern religious education could be bound up with truth and
virtue and good manners and good taste, that would be the best
hope of human improvement. Plato, like ourselves, is looking
forward to changes in the moral and religious world, and is pre-
paring for them. He recognizes the danger of unsettling young
men's minds by sudden changes of laws and principles, by destroy-
ing the sacredness of one set of ideas when there is nothing else to
take their place. He is afraid too of the influence of the drama,
on the ground that it encourages false sentiment, and therefore he
would not have his children taken to the theatre ; he thinks that
the effect on the spectators is bad, and on the actors still worse.
His idea of education is that of harmonious growth, in which are
insensibly learnt the lessons of temperance and endurance, and
the body and mind develope in equal proportions. The first prin-
ciple which runs through all art and nature is simplicity; this
also is to be the rule of human life.
The second stage of education is gymnastic, which answers to
the period of muscular growth and development. The simplicity
which is enforced in music is extended to gymnastic ; Plato is
aware that the training of the body may be inconsistent with the
The Education of the Repiiblic. cciii
training of the mind, and that bodily exercise may be easily over- Republic.
done. Excessive training of the body is apt to give men a headache
or to render them sleepy at a lecture on philosophy, and this they
attribute not to the true cause, but to the nature of the subject.
Two points are noticeable in Plato's treatment of gymnastic :—
First, that the time of training is entirely separated from the time
of literary education. He seems to have thought that two things
of an opposite and different nature could not be learnt at the same
time. Here we can hardly agree with him ; and, if we may judge by
experience, the effect of spending three years between the ages of
fourteen and seventeen in mere bodily exercise would be far from
improving to the intellect. Secondly, he affirms that music and
gymnastic are not, as common opinion is apt to imagine, intended,
the one for the cultivation of the mind and the other of the body,
but that they are both equally designed for the improvement of the
mind. The body, in his view, is the servant of the mind ; the
subjection of the lower to the higher is for the advantage of both.
And doubtless the mind may exercise a very great and paramount
influence over the body, if exerted not at particular moments and
by fits and starts, but continuously, in making preparation for the
whole of life. Other Greek writers saw the mischievous tendency
of Spartan discipline (Arist. Pol. viii. 4, § i foil. ; Thuc. ii. 37, 39).
But only Plato recognized the fundamental error on which the
practice was based.
The subject of gymnastic leads Plato to the sister subject of
medicine, which he further illustrates by the parallel of law.
The modern disbelief in medicine has led in this, as in some other
departments of knowledge, to a demand for greater simplicity ;
physicians are becoming aware that they often make diseases
* greater and more complicated ' by their treatment of them
(Rep. iv. 426 A). In two thousand years their art has made but
slender progress ; what they have gained in the analysis of the
parts is in a great degree lost by their feebler conception of the
human frame as a whole. They have attended more to the cure
of diseases than to the conditions of health ; and the improvements
in medicine have been more than counterbalanced by the disuse
of regular training. Until lately they have hardly thought of air
and water, the importance of which was well understood by the
ancients ; as Aristotle remarks, 'Air and water, being the elements
cciv The Education of the Republic,
Republic, which we most use, have the greatest effect upon health ' (Polit.
vii- IT> § 4)- For aSes physicians have been under the dominion of
prejudices which have only recently given way ; and now there
are as many opinions in medicine as in theology, and an equal
degree of scepticism and some want of toleration about both. Plato
has several good notions about medicine ; according to him, 'the
eye cannot be cured without the rest of the body, nor the body
without the mind ' (Charm. 156 E). No man of sense, he says in
the Timaeus, would take physic ; and we heartily sympathize with
him in the Laws when he declares that ' the limbs of the rustic
worn with toil will derive more benefit from warm baths than from
the prescriptions of a not over wise doctor ' (vi. 761 C). But we
can hardly praise him when, in obedience to the authority of
Homer, he depreciates diet, or approve of the inhuman spirit in
which he would get rid of invalid and useless lives by leaving
them to die. He does not seem to have considered that the ' bridle
of Theages ' might be accompanied by qualities which were of far
more value to the State than the health or strength of the citizens ;
or that the duty of taking care of the helpless might be an important
element of education in a State. The physician himself (this is
a delicate and subtle observation) should not be a man in robust
health ; he should have, in modern phraseology, a nervous tem-
perament ; he should have experience of disease in his own person,
in order that his powers of observation may be quickened in the
case of others.
The perplexity of medicine is paralleled by the perplexity of
law ; in which, again, Plato would have men follow the golden rule
of simplicity. Greater matters are to be determined by the
legislator or by the oracle of Delphi, lesser matters are to be left
to the temporary regulation of the citizens themselves. Plato is
aware that laissez faire is an important element of government.
The diseases of a State are like the heads of a hydra; they
multiply when they are cut off. The true remedy for them is not
extirpation but prevention. And the way to prevent them is to
take care of education, and education will take care of all the rest.
So in modern times men have often felt that the only political
measure worth having— the only one which would produce any
certain or lasting effect, was a measure of national education. And
in our own more than in any previous age the necessity has been
The Education of the Republic. ccv
recognized of restoring the ever-increasing confusion of law to Republic.
simplicity and common sense. INTRODUC-
When the training in music and gymnastic is completed, there
follows the first stage of active and public life. But soon education
is to begin again from a new point of view. In the interval
between the Fourth and Seventh Books we have discussed the
nature of knowledge, and have thence been led to form a higher
conception of what was required of us. For true knowledge,
according to Plato, is of abstractions, and has to do, not with
particulars or individuals, but with universals only ; not with the
beauties of poetry, but with the ideas of philosophy. And the
great aim of education is the cultivation of the habit of abstraction.
This is to be acquired through the study of the mathematical
sciences. They alone are capable of giving ideas of relation, and
of arousing the dormant energies of thought.
Mathematics in the age of Plato comprehended a very small part
of that which is now included in them ; but they bore a much
larger proportion to the sum of human knowledge. They were
the only organon of thought which the human mind at that time
possessed, and the only measure by which the chaos of particulars
could be reduced to rule and order. The faculty which they
trained was naturally at war with the poetical or imaginative ; and
hence to Plato, who is everywhere seeking for abstractions and
trying to get rid of the illusions of sense, nearly the whole of edu-
cation is contained in them. They seemed to have an inexhaustible
application, partly because their true limits were not yet under-
stood. These Plato himself is beginning to investigate ; though
not aware that number and figure are mere abstractions of sense,
he recognizes that the forms used by geometry are borrowed
from the sensible world (vi. 510, 511). He seeks to find the
ultimate ground of mathematical ideas in the idea of good, though
he does not satisfactorily explain the connexion between them;
and in his conception of the relation of ideas to numbers, he falls
very far short of the definiteness attributed to him by Aristotle
(Met. i. 8, § 24 ; ix. 17). But if he fails to recognize the true limits
of mathematics, he also reaches a point beyond them ; in his view,
ideas of number become secondary to a higher conception of
knowledge. The dialectician is as much above the mathematician
as the mathematician is above the ordinary man (cp. vii. 526 D,
ccvi The Idea of Good.
Republic. 531 E). The one, the self-proving, the good which is the higher
sphere of dialectic, is the perfect truth to which all things ascend,
and in which they finally repose.
This self-proving unity or idea of good is a mere vision of
which no distinct explanation can be given, relative only to a
particular stage in Greek philosophy. It is an abstraction under
which no individuals are comprehended, a whole which has
no parts (cf. Arist, Nic. Eth., i. 4). The vacancy of such a form
was perceived by Aristotle, but not by Plato. Nor did he recognize
that in the dialectical process are included two or more methods
of investigation which are at variance with each other. He did
not see that whether he took the longer or the shorter road, no
advance could be made in this way. And yet such visions often
have an immense effect ; for although the method of science
cannot anticipate science, the idea of science, not as it is, but
as it will be in the future, is a great and inspiring principle. In
the pursuit of knowledge we are always pressing forward to
something beyond us ; and as a false conception of knowledge,
for example the scholastic philosophy, may lead men astray during
many ages, so the true ideal, though vacant, may draw all
their thoughts in a right direction. It makes a great difference
whether the general expectation of knowledge, as this indefinite
feeling may be termed, is based upon a sound judgment. For
mankind may often entertain a true conception of what knowledge
ought to be when they have but a slender experience of facts.
The correlation of the sciences, the consciousness of the unity
of nature, the idea of classification, the sense of proportion,
the unwillingness to stop short of certainty or to confound pro-
bability with truth, are important principles of the higher edu-
cation. Although Plato could tell us nothing, and perhaps knew
that he could tell us nothing, of the absolute truth, he has exercised
an influence on the human mind which even at the present day
is not exhausted ; and political and social questions may yet arise
in which the thoughts of Plato may be read anew and receive
a fresh meaning.
The Idea of good is so called only in the Republic, but there
are traces of it in other dialogues of Plato. It is a cause as
well as an idea, and from this point of view may be compared
with the creator of the Timaeus, who out of his goodness created
The Science of Dialectic. ccvii
all things. It corresponds to a certain extent with the modern Republic.
conception of a law of nature, or of a final cause, or of both in INTRODUC-
TION.
one, and in this regard may be connected with the measure
and symmetry of the Philebus. It is represented in the Sym-
posium under the aspect of beauty, and is supposed to be attained
there by stages of initiation, as here by regular gradations of
knowledge. Viewed subjectively, it is the process or science
of dialectic. This is the science which, according to the Phae-
drus, is the true basis of rhetoric, which alone is able to distin-
guish the natures and classes of men and things ; which divides
a whole into the natural parts, and reunites the scattered parts,
into a natural or organized whole ; which defines the abstract
essences or universal ideas of all things, and connects them;
which pierces the veil of hypotheses and reaches the final cause
or first principle of all; wjhich regards the sciences in relation
to the idea of good. This ideal science is the highest process
of thought, and may be described as the soul conversing with
herself or holding communion with eternal truth and beauty,
and in another form is the everlasting question and answer —
the ceaseless interrogative of Socrates. The dialogues of Plato
are themselves examples of the nature and method of dialectic. .
Viewed objectively, the idea of good is a power or cause which
makes the world without us correspond with the world within.
Yet this world without us is still a world of ideas. With Plato
the investigation of nature is another department of knowledge,
and in this he seeks to attain only probable conclusions (cp.
Timaeus, 44 D).
If we ask whether this science of dialectic which Plato only
half explains to us is more akin to logic or to metaphysics, the
answer is that in his mind the two sciences are not as yet dis-
tinguished, any more than the subjective and objective aspects
of the world and of man, which German philosophy has revealed
to us. Nor has he determined whether his science of dialectic
is at rest or in motion, concerned with the contemplation of
absolute being, or with a process of development and evolu-
tion. Modern metaphysics may be described as the science of
abstractions, or as the science of the evolution of thought ; modern
logic, when passing beyond the bounds of mere Aristotelian
forms, may be defined as the science of method. The germ of
ccviii The Science of Dialectic.
Republic, both of them is contained in the Platonic dialectic ; all meta-
" Pnysicians nave something in common with the ideas of Plato ;
all logicians have derived something from the method of Plato.
The nearest approach in modern philosophy to the universal
science of Plato, is to be found in the Hegelian ' succession of
moments in the unity of the idea/ Plato and Hegel alike seem
to have conceived the world as the correlation of abstractions ;
and not impossibly they would have understood one another
better than any of their commentators understand them (cp. Swift's
Voyage to Laputa, c. 8 T). There is, however, a diiference between
.them : for whereas Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men
as one mind, which developes the stages of the idea in different
countries or at different times in the same country, with Plato
these gradations are regarded only as an order of thought or
ideas ; the history of the human mind had not yet dawned
upon him.
Many criticisms may be made on Plato's theory of education.
While in some respects he unavoidably falls short of modern
thinkers, in others he is in advance of them. He is opposed to
the modes of education which prevailed in his own time; but
he can hardly be said to have discovered new ones. He does
1 ' Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit
* and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and
' Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators ; but these were
'so numerous that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court and
'outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish these two
* heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other. Homer
' was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of
' his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aris-
' totle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his
' hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of
' them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or
4 heard of them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost, who shall be
4 nameless, " That these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters
' from their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame
' and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of these
' authors to posterity." I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and
' prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon
' found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle
' was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as
' I presented them to him ; and he asked them " whether the rest of the tribe
' were as great dunces as themselves ? " *
The Education of later life. ccix
not see that education is relative to the characters of individuals ; Republic.
he only desires to impress the same form of the state on the INTRODUC-
TION.
minds of all. He has no sufficient idea of the effect of litera-
ture on the formation of the mind, and greatly exaggerates
that of mathematics. His aim is above all things to train
the reasoning faculties ; to implant in the mind the spirit
and power of abstraction ; to explain and define general notions,
and, if possible, to connect them. No wonder that in the vacancy
of actual knowledge his followers, and at times even he himself,
should have fallen away from the doctrine of ideas, and have
returned to that branch of knowledge in which alone the rela-
tion of the one and many can be truly seen — the science of number.
In his views both of teaching and training he might be styled,
in modern language, a doctrinaire ; after the Spartan fashion
he would have his citizens cast in one mould ; he does not seem
to consider that some degree of freedom, 'a little wholesome
neglect,' is necessary to strengthen and develope the character
and to give play to the individual nature. His citizens would
not have acquired that knowledge which in the vision of Er is sup-
posed to be gained by the pilgrims from their experience of evil.
On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philo-
sophers and theologians when he teaches that education is to
be continued through life and will begin again in another. He
would never allow education of some kind to cease ; although
he was aware that the proverbial saying of Solon, * I grow old
learning many things,' cannot be applied literally. Himself
ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and de-
lighting in solid geometry (Rep. vii. 528), he has no difficulty
in imagining that a lifetime might be passed happily in such
pursuits. We who know how many more men of business
there are in the world than real students or thinkers, are not
equally sanguine. The education which he proposes for his
citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of
genius, interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties, — a
life not for the many, but for the few.
Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of ap-
plication to our own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which
can never be realized, it may have a great effect in elevating
the characters of mankind, and raising them above the routine
P
ccx The Education of later life.
Republic, of their ordinary occupation or profession. It is the best form
INTRODUC- under which we can conceive the whole of life. Nevertheless the
TION.
idea of Plato is not easily put into practice. For the education
of after life is necessarily the education which each one gives
himself. Men and women cannot be brought together in schools
or colleges at forty or fifty years of age ; and if they could the
result would be disappointing. The destination of most men is
what Plato would call ' the Den ' for the whole of life, and with
that they are content. Neither have they teachers or advisers
with whom they can take counsel in riper years. There is no
' schoolmaster abroad ' who will tell them of their faults, or in-
spire them with the higher sense of duty, or with the ambition
of a true success in life ; no Socrates who will convict them of
ignorance ; no Christ, or follower of Christ, who will reprove them
of sin. Hence they have a difficulty in receiving the first element
of improvement, which is self-knowledge. The hopes of youth no
longer stir them ; they rather wish to rest than to pursue high objects.
A few only who have come across great men and women, or eminent
teachers of religion and morality, have received a second life from
them, and have lighted a candle from the fire of their genius.
The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few
persons continue to improve in later years. They have not the
will, and do not know the way. They ' never try an experiment,'
or look up a point of interest for themselves ; they make no sacri-
fices for the sake of knowledge ; their minds, like their bodies,
at a certain age become fixed. Genius has been defined as 'the
power of taking pains ' ; but hardly any one keeps up his interest
in knowledge throughout a whole life. The troubles of a family,
the business of making money, the demands of a profession de-
stroy the elasticity of the mind. The waxen tablet of the memory
which was once capable of receiving 'true thoughts and clear
impressions ' becomes hard and crowded ; there is not room for
the accumulations of a long life (Theaet. 194 ff.). The student, as
years advance, rather makes an exchange of knowledge than
adds to his stores. There is no pressing necessity to learn;
the stock of Classics or History or Natural Science which was
enough for a man at twenty-five is enough for him at fifty.
Neither is it easy to give a definite answer to any one who
asks how he is to improve. For self-education consists in a
The Education of later life. ccxi
thousand things, commonplace in themselves, — in adding to what Republic.
we are by nature something of what we are not ; in learning to
see ourselves as others see us ; in judging, not by opinion, but
by the evidence of facts ; in seeking out the society of superior
minds ; in a study of the lives and writings of great men ; in
observation of the world and character ; in receiving kindly the
natural influence of different times of life ; in any act or thought
which is raised above the practice or opinions of mankind; in
the pursuit of some new or original enquiry; in any effort of
mind which calls forth some latent power.
If any one is desirous of carrying out in detail the Platonic
education of after-life, some such counsels as the following may
be offered to him :— That he shall choose the branch of know-
ledge to which his own mind most distinctly inclines, and in
which he takes the greatest delight, either one which seems
to connect with his own daily employment, or, perhaps, fur-
nishes the greatest contrast to it. He may study from the
speculative side the profession or business in which he is practi-
cally engaged. He may make Homer, Dante, Shakespeare,
Plato, Bacon the friends and companions of his life. He may
find opportunities of hearing the living voice of a great teacher.
He may select for enquiry some point of history or some un-
explained phenomenon of nature. An hour a day passed in
such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as many facts
as the memory can retain, and will give him ' a pleasure not to
be repented of (Timaeus, 59 D). Only let him beware of being
the slave of crotchets, or of running after a Will o' the Wisp in
his ignorance, or in his vanity of attributing to himself the gifts of
a poet or assuming the air of a philosopher. He should know
the limits of his own powers. Better to build up the mind by
slow additions, to creep on quietly from one thing to another,
to gain insensibly new powers and new interests in knowledge,
than to form vast schemes which are never destined to be
realized. But perhaps, as Plato would say, 'This is part of
another subject ' (Tim. 87 B) ; though we may also defend our
digression by his example (Theaet. 72, 77).
IV. We remark with surprise that the progress of nations or
P2
ccx
The Progress of the World.
Republic, the natural growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on
UC" Pontical philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the atten-
tion of Plato and Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the
mutability of human affairs ; they could moralize over the ruins of
cities and the fall of empires (cp. Plato, Statesman 301, 302, and
Sulpicius' Letter to Cicero, Ad Fam. iv. 5) ; by them fate and
chance were deemed to be real powers, almost persons, and to
have had a great share in political events. The wiser of them
like Thucydides believed that 'what had been would be again,'
and that a tolerable idea of the future could be gathered from the
past. Also they had dreams of a Golden Age which existed once
upon a time and might still exist in some unknown land, or might
return again in the remote future. But the regular growth of a
state enlightened by experience, progressing in knowledge, im-
proving in the arts, of which the citizens were educated by the
fulfilment of political duties, appears never to have come within
the range of their hopes and aspirations. Such a state had never
been seen, and therefore could not be conceived by them. Their
experience (cp. Aristot. Metaph. xi. 21 ; Plato, Laws iii. 676-9)
led them to conclude that there had been cycles of civilization in
which the arts had been discovered and lost many times over,
and cities had been overthrown and rebuilt again and again, and
deluges and volcanoes and other natural convulsions had altered
the face of the earth. Tradition told them of many destructions
of mankind and of the preservation of a remnant. The world
began again after a deluge and was reconstructed out of the
fragments of itself. Also they were acquainted with empires of
unknown antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian ; but they had
never seen them grow, and could not imagine, any more than
we can, the state of man which preceded them. They were
puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian monuments, of which
the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure, but literally, were ten
thousand years old (Laws ii. 656 E), and they contrasted the an-
tiquity of Egypt with their own short memories.
The early legends of Hellas have no real connection with the
later history : they are at a distance, and the intermediate region
is concealed from view ; there is no road or path which leads from
one to the other. At the beginning of Greek history, in the
vestibule of the temple, is seen standing first of all the figure of
The Progress of the World. ccxiii
the legislator, himself the interpreter and servant of the God. Republic,
The fundamental laws which he gives are not supposed to change
with time and circumstances. The salvation of the state is held
rather to depend on the inviolable maintenance of them. They
were sanctioned by the authority of heaven, and it was deemed
impiety to alter them. The desire to maintain them unaltered
seems to be the origin of what at first sight is very surprising
to us — the intolerant zeal of Plato against innovators in religion
or politics (cp. Laws x. 907-9) ; although with a happy incon-
sistency he is also willing that the laws of other countries should
be studied and improvements in legislation privately communi-
cated to the Nocturnal Council (Laws xii. 951, 2). The additions
which were made to them in later ages in order to meet the
increasing complexity of affairs were still ascribed by a fiction
to the original legislator; and the words of such enactments at
Athens were disputed over as if they had been the words of
Solon himself. Plato hopes to preserve in a later generation the
mind of the legislator ; he would have his citizens remain within
the lines which he has laid down for them. He would not harass
them with minute regulations, and he would have allowed some
changes in the laws : but not changes which would affect the
fundamental institutions of the state, such for example as would
convert an aristocracy into a timocracy, or a timocracy into a
popular form of government.
Passing from speculations to facts, we observe that progress
has been the exception rather than the law of human history.
And therefore we are not surprised to find that the idea of pro-
gress is of modern rather than of ancient date ; and, like the idea
of a philosophy of history, is not more than a century or two old.
It seems to have arisen out of the impression left on the human
mind by the growth of the Roman Empire and of the Christian
Church, and to be due to the political and social improvements
which they introduced into the world ; and still more in our own
century to the idealism of the first French Revolution and the
triumph of American Independence ; and in a yet greater degree
to the vast material prosperity and growth of population in
England and her colonies and in America. It is also to be
ascribed in a measure to the greater study of the philosophy of
history. The optimist temperament of some great writers has
ccxiv The Republic and the Laws.
Republic, assisted the creation of it, while the opposite character has led a
INTRODUC- few to regard the future of the world as dark. The ' spectator of
all time and of all existence ' sees more of ' the increasing purpose
which through the ages ran ' than formerly : but to the inhabitant
of a small state of Hellas the vision was necessarily limited like
the valley in which he dwelt. There was no remote past on
which his eye could rest, nor any future from which the veil
was partly lifted up by the analogy of history. The narrowness
of view, which to ourselves appears so singular, was to him
natural, if not unavoidable.
V. For the relation of the Republic to the Statesman and the
Laws, the two other works of Plato which directly treat of politics,
see the Introductions to the two latter ; a few general points of
comparison may be touched upon in this place.
And first of the Laws, (i) The Republic, though probably
written at intervals, yet speaking generally and judging by the
indications of thought and style, may be reasonably ascribed to
the middle period of Plato's life : the Laws are certainly the work
of his declining years, and some portions of them at any rate seem
to have been written in extreme old age. (2) The Republic is
full of hope and aspiration : the Laws bear the stamp of failure
and disappointment. The one is a finished work which received
the last touches of the author : the other is imperfectly executed,
and apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty of
youth : the other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the
severity and knowledge of life which is characteristic of old age.
(3) The most conspicuous defect of the Laws is the failure of
dramatic power, whereas the Republic is full of striking contrasts
of ideas and oppositions of character. (4) The Laws may be said
to have more the nature of a sermon, the Republic of a poem ;
the one is more religious, the other more intellectual. (5) Many
theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas, the government
of the world by philosophers, are not found in the Laws ; the
immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii. 959, 967 ; the
person of Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community
of women and children is renounced ; the institution of common
or public meals for women (Laws vi. 781) is for the first time intro-
The Republic and the Laws. ccxv
duced (Ar. Pol. ii. 6, § 5). (6) There remains in the Laws the old Republic.
enmity to the poets (vii. 817), who are ironically saluted in high- INTRODUC-
flown terms, and, at the same time, are peremptorily ordered out
of the city, if they are not willing to submit their poems to the
censorship of the magistrates (cp. Rep. iii. 398). (7) Though the
work is in most respects inferior, there are a few passages in the
Laws, such as v. 727 ff. (the honour due to the soul), viii. 835 ff.
(the evils of licentious or unnatural love), the whole of Book x.
(religion), xi. 918 ff. (the dishonesty of retail trade), and 923 ff.
(bequests), which come more home to us, and contain more of
what may be termed the modern element in Plato than almost
anything in the Republic.
The relation of the two works to one another is very well given :
(i) by Aristotle in the Politics (ii. 6, §§ 1-5) from the side of
the Laws : —
'The same, or nearly the same, objections apply to Plato's
' later work, the Laws, and therefore we had better examine briefly
'the constitution which is therein described. In the Republic,
' Socrates has definitely settled in all a few questions only ; such
'as the community of women and children, the community of
'property, and the constitution of the state. The population is
' divided into two classes — one of husbandmen, and the other of
' warriors ; from this latter is taken a third class of counsellors
' and rulers of the state. But Socrates has not determined whether
'the husbandmen and artists are to have a share in the govern-
'ment, and whether they too are to carry arms and share in
'military service or not. He certainly thinks that the women
'ought to share in the education of the guardians, and to fight
'by their side. The remainder of the work is filled up with
'digressions foreign to the main subject, and with discussions
'about the education of the guardians. In the Laws there is
' hardly anything but laws ; not much is said about the constitution.
' This, which he had intended to make more of the ordinary type,
' he gradually brings round to the other or ideal form. For with
'the exception of the community of women and property, he
' supposes everything to be the same in both states ; there is to be
' the same education ; the citizens of both are to live free from
' servile occupations, and there are to be common meals in both.
' The only difference is that in the Laws the common meals are
ccxvi The Republk and the Laws.
Republic. ' extended to women, and the warriors number about 5000, but in
INTRODUC- < the Republic only 1000.'
TION. J
(ii) by Plato in the Laws (Book v. 739 B-E), from the side of
the Republic : —
' The first and highest form of the state and of the government
'and of the law is that in which there prevails most widely the
' ancient saying that " Friends have all things in common." Whether
' there is now, or ever will be, this communion of women and
'children and of property, in which the private and individual
' is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature
* private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common,
* and all men express praise and blame, and feel joy and sorrow,
' on the same occasions, and the laws unite the city to the utmost, —
' whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon
' any other principle, will ever constitute a state more exalted in
'virtue, or truer or better than this. Such a state, whether in-
' habited by Gods or sons of Gods, will make them blessed who
' dwell therein ; and therefore to this we are to look for the pattern
1 of the state, and to cling to this, and, as far as possible, to seek
' for one which is like this. The state which we have now in hand,
'when created, will be nearest to immortality and unity in the
' next degree ; and after that, by the grace of God, we will com-
' plete the third one. And we will begin by speaking of the nature
1 and origin of the second.'
The comparatively short work called the Statesman or Politicus
in its style and manner is more akin to the Laws, while in its
idealism it rather resembles the Republic. As far as we can
judge by various indications of language and thought, it must
be later than the one and of course earlier than the other. In
both the Republic and Statesman a close connection is maintained
between Politics and Dialectic. In the Statesman, enquiries into
the principles of Method are interspersed with discussions about
Politics. The comparative advantages of the rule of law and of
a person are considered, and the decision given in favour of a
person (Arist. Pol. iii. 15, 16). But much may be said on the other
side, nor is the opposition necessary ; for a person may rule by law,
and law may be so applied as to be the living voice of the legis-
lator. As in the Republic, there is a myth, describing, however,
not a future, but a former existence of mankind. The question is
Cicero s De Republica. ccxvii
asked, ' Whether the state of innocence which is described in the Republic.
myth, or a state like our own which possesses art and science and INTRODU<>
distmguishes good from evil, is the preferable condition of man.'
To this question of the comparative happiness of civilized and
primitive life, which was so often discussed in the last century and
in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman, though less
perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range, may
justly be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato's dialogues.
VI. Others as well as Plato have chosen an ideal Republic to
be the vehicle of thoughts which they could not definitely express,
or which went beyond their own age. The classical writing
which approaches most nearly to the Republic of Plato is the
* De Republica ' of Cicero ; but neither in this nor in any other
of his dialogues does he rival the art of Plato. The manners are
clumsy and inferior ; the hand of the rhetorician is apparent at
every turn. Yet noble sentiments are constantly recurring : the
true note of Roman patriotism — ' We Romans are a great people '
— resounds through the whole work. Like Socrates, Cicero turns
away from the phenomena of the heavens to civil and political
life. He would rather not discuss the 'two Suns' of which all
Rome was talking, when he can converse about ' the two nations
in one' which had divided Rome ever since the days of the
Gracchi. Like Socrates again, speaking in the person of Scipio,
he is afraid lest he should assume too much the character of a
teacher, rather than of an equal who is discussing among friends
the two sides of a question. He would confine the terms King
or State to the rule of reason and justice, and he will not concede
that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy. But under
the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the natural
superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to
the soul ruling over the body. He prefers a mixture of forms
of government to any single one. The two portraits of the just
and the unjust, which occur in the second book of the Republic,
are transferred to the state — Philus, one of the interlocutors,
maintaining against his will the necessity of injustice as a
principle of government, while the other, Laelius, supports the
opposite thesis. His views of language and number are derived
ccxviii St. Augustine s De Civitate Dei.
v>
Republic, from Plato ; like him he denounces the drama. He also declares
t^ia* ^ kis ^e were to be twice as long he would have no time
to read the lyric poets. The picture of democracy is translated
by him word for word, though he has hardly shown himself able
to '.carry the jest ' of Plato. He converts into a stately sentence
the humorous fancy about the animals, who ' are so imbued with
the spirit of democracy that they make the passers-by get out
of their way' (i. 42). His description of the tyrant is imitated
from Plato, but is far inferior. The second book is historical,
and claims for the Roman constitution (which is to him the ideal)
a foundation of fact such as Plato probably intended to have given
to the Republic in the Critias. His most remarkable imitation
of Plato is the adaptation of the vision of Er, which is converted
by Cicero into the ' Somnium Scipionis ' ; he has ' romanized '
the myth of the Republic, adding an argument for the immortality
of the soul taken from the Phaedrus, and some other touches
derived from the Phaedo and the Timaeus. Though a beautiful
tale and containing splendid passages, the ' Somnium Scipionis ' is
very inferior to the vision of Er ; it is only a dream, and hardly
allows the reader to suppose that the writer believes in his own
creation. Whether his dialogues were framed on the model of
the lost dialogues of Aristotle, as he himself tells us, or of Plato,
to which they bear many superficial resemblances, he is still the
Roman orator; he is not conversing, but making speeches, and
is never able to mould the intractable Latin to the grace and
ease of the Greek Platonic dialogue. But if he is defective in
form, much more is he inferior to the Greek in matter; he no-
where in his philosophical writings leaves upon our minds the
impression of an original thinker.
Plato's Republic has been said to be a church and not a state ;
and such an ideal of a city in the heavens has always hovered
over the Christian world, and is embodied in St. Augustine's ' De
Civitate Dei,' which is suggested by the decay and fall of the
Roman Empire, much in the same manner in which we may
imagine the Republic of Plato to have been influenced by the
decline of Greek politics in the writer's own age. The difference
is that in the time of Plato the degeneracy, though certain, was
gradual and insensible: whereas the taking of Rome by the
Goths stirred like an earthquake the age of St. Augustine. Men
St. Augustine s De Civitate Dei. ccxix
were inclined to believe that the overthrow of the city was to be Republic.
ascribed to the anger felt by the old Roman deities at the neglect
of their worship. St. Augustine maintains the opposite thesis ;
he argues that the destruction of the Roman Empire is due,
not to the rise of Christianity, but to the vices of Paganism.
He wanders over Roman history, and over Greek philosophy
and mythology, and finds everywhere crime, impiety and false-
hood. He compares the worst parts of the Gentile religions
with the best elements of the faith of Christ. He shows nothing
of the spirit which led others of the early Christian Fathers to
recognize in the writings of the Greek philosophers the power of
the divine truth. He traces the parallel of the kingdom of God,
that is, the history of the Jews, contained in their scriptures,
and of the kingdoms of the world, which are found in gentile
writers, and pursues them both into an ideal future. It need
hardly be remarked that his use both of Greek and of Roman
historians and of the sacred writings of the Jews is wholly
uncritical. The heathen mythology, the Sybilline oracles, the
myths of Plato, the dreams of Neo-Platonists are equally regarded
by him as matter of fact. He must be acknowledged to be a
strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes the best
of everything on one side and the worst of everything on the
other. He has no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato
has with Greek life, nor has he any idea of the ecclesiastical
kingdom which was to arise out of the ruins of the Roman
empire. He is not blind to the defects of the Christian Church,
and looks forward to a time when Christian and Pagan shall be
alike brought before the judgment-seat, and the true City of God
shall appear. . . . The work of St. Augustine is a curious repertory
of antiquarian learning and quotations, deeply penetrated with
Christian ethics, but showing little power of reasoning, and a
slender knowledge of the Greek literature and language. He
was a great genius, and a noble character, yet hardly capable of
feeling or understanding anything external to his own theology.
Of all the ancient philosophers he is most attracted by Plato,
though he is very slightly acquainted with his writings. He
is inclined to believe that the idea of creation in the Timaeus is
derived from the narrative in Genesis ; and he is strangely taken
with the coincidence (?) of Plato's saying that 'the philosopher
TION.
ccxx Dante s De Monarchia.
Republic, is the lover of God,' and the words of the Book of Exodus
IN™°°UC- in which God reveals himself to Moses (Exod. iii. 14). He
dwells at length on miracles performed in his own day, of which
the evidence is regarded by him as irresistible. He speaks in a
very interesting manner of the beauty and utility of nature and
of the human frame, which he conceives to aiford a foretaste
of the heavenly state and of the resurrection of the body. The
book is not really what to most persons the title of it would
imply, and belongs to an age which- has passed away. But it
contains many fine passages and thoughts which are for all
time.
The short treatise de Monarchia of Dante is by far the most
remarkable of mediaeval ideals, and bears the impress of the
great genius in whom Italy and the Middle Ages are so vividly
reflected. It is the vision of an Universal Empire, which is
supposed to be the natural and necessary government of the
world, having a divine authority distinct from the Papacy, yet
coextensive with it. It is not 'the ghost of the dead Roman
Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof/ but the legitimate
heir and successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the
Romans and the beneficence of their rule. Their right to be
the governors of the world is also confirmed by the testimony
of miracles, and acknowledged by St. Paul when he appealed
to Caesar, and even more emphatically by Christ Himself, Who
could not have made atonement for the sins of men if He had
not been condemned by a divinely authorized tribunal. The
necessity for the establishment of an Universal Empire is proved
partly by a priori arguments such as the unity of God and the
unity of the family or nation ; partly by perversions of Scripture
and history, by false analogies of nature, by misapplied quotations
from the classics, and by odd scraps and commonplaces of logic,
showing a familiar but by no means exact knowledge of Aristotle
(of Plato there is none). But a more convincing argument still
is the miserable state of the world, which he touchingly describes.
He sees no hope of happiness or peace for mankind until all
nations of the earth are comprehended in a single empire. The
whole treatise shows how deeply the idea of the Roman Empire
was fixed in the minds of his contemporaries. Not much argument
was needed to maintain the truth of a theory which to his own
Sir Thomas Mores Utopia. ccxxi
contemporaries seemed so natural and congenial. He speaks, Republic.
or rather preaches, from the point of view, not of the ecclesiastic, INTRODUC-
but of the layman, although, as a good Catholic, he is willing
to acknowledge that in certain respects the Empire must submit
to the Church. The beginning and end of all his noble reflections
and of his arguments, good and bad, is the aspiration, 'that in
this little plot of earth belonging to mortal man life may pass
in freedom and peace.' So inextricably is his vision of the future
bound up with the beliefs and circumstances of his own age.
The 'Utopia' of Sir Thomas More is a surprising monument
of his genius, and shows a reach of thought far beyond his
contemporaries. The book was written by him at the age of
about 34 or 35, and is full of the generous sentiments of youth.
He brings the light of Plato to bear upon the miserable state
of his own country. Living not long after the Wars of the
Roses, and in the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he
is indignant at the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the
nobility and gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities
caused by war. To the eye of More the whole world was
in dissolution and decay; and side by side with the misery
and oppression which he has described in the First Book of the
Utopia, he places in the Second Book the ideal state which by
the help of Plato he had constructed. The times were full of
stir and intellectual interest. The distant murmur of the Re-
formation was beginning to be heard. To minds like More's,
Greek literature was a revelation : there had arisen an art of inter-
pretation, and the New Testament was beginning to be understood
as it had never been before, and has not often been since, in its
natural sense. The life there depicted appeared to him wholly
unlike that of Christian commonwealths, in which 'he saw
nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their
own commodities under the name and title of the Commonwealth.'
He thought that Christ, like Plato, ' instituted all things common/
for which reason, he tells us, the citizens of Utopia were the
more willing to receive his doctrines1. The community of
1 ' Howbeit, I think this was no small help and furtherance in the matter,
that they heard us say that Christ instituted among his, all things common, and
that the same community doth yet remain in the rightest Christian com-
munities ' (Utopia, English Reprints, p. 144).
ccxxii Sir Thomas More 5 Utopia.
Republic, property is a fixed idea with him, though he is aware of the
INTRODUC- arguments which may be urged on the other side \ We wonder
how in the reign of Henry VIII, though veiled in another language
and published in a foreign country, such speculations could have
been endured.
He is gifted with far greater dramatic invention than any one
who succeeded him, with the exception of Swift. In the art of
feigning he is a worthy disciple of Plato. Like him, starting from
a small portion of fact, he founds his tale with admirable skill on a
few lines in the Latin narrative of the voyages of Amerigo
Vespucci. He is very precise about dates and facts, and has the
power of making us believe that the narrator of the tale must have
been an eyewitness. We are fairly puzzled by his manner of
mixing up real and imaginary persons ; his boy John Clement and
Peter Giles, the citizen of Antwerp, with whom he disputes about
the precise words which are supposed to have been used by the
(imaginary) Portuguese traveller, Raphael Hythloday. 'I have
the more cause,' says Hythloday, ' to fear that my words shall not
be believed, for that I know how difficultly and hardly I myself
would have believed another man telling the same, if I had not
myself seen it with mine own eyes.' Or again : 'If you had been
with me in Utopia, and had presently seen their fashions and laws
as I did which lived there five years and more, and would never
have come thence, but only to make the new land known here,'
etc. More greatly regrets that he forgot to ask Hythloday in what
part of the world Utopia is situated ; he ' would have spent no
small sum of money rather than it should have escaped him/ and
he begs Peter Giles to see Hythloday or write to him and obtain
an answer to the question. After this we are not surprised to
hear that a Professor of Divinity (perhaps ' a late famous vicar of
Croydon in Surrey,' as the translator thinks) is desirous of being
sent thither as a missionary by the High Bishop, ' yea, and that he
may himself be made Bishop of Utopia, nothing doubting that he
must obtain this Bishopric with suit ; and he counteth that a godly
1 ' These things (I say), when I consider with myself, I hold well with Plato,
and do nothing marvel that he would make no laws for them that refused those
laws, whereby all men should have and enjoy equal portions of riches and
commodities. For the wise man did easily foresee this to be the one and only
way to the wealth of a community, if equality of all things should be brought
in and established' (Utopia, English Reprints, pp. 67, 68).
Sir Thomas Mores Utopia. ccxxiii
suit which proceedeth not of the desire of honour or lucre, but Republic.
only of a godly zeal.' The design may have failed through the
disappearance of Hythloday, concerning whom we have 'very
uncertain news ' after his departure. There is no doubt, however,
that he had told More and Giles the exact situation of the island,
but unfortunately at the same moment More's attention, as he is
reminded in a letter from Giles, was drawn off by a servant, and
one of the company from a cold caught on shipboard coughed so
loud as to prevent Giles from hearing. And 'the secret has
perished' with him; to this day the place of Utopia remains
unknown.
The words of Phaedrus (275 B), ' O Socrates, you can easily
invent Egyptians or anything,' are recalled to our mind as we read
this lifelike fiction. Yet the greater merit of the work is not the
admirable art, but the originality of thought. More is as free as
Plato from the prejudices of his age, and far more tolerant. The
Utopians do not allow him who believes not in the immortality of
the soul to share in the administration of the state (cp. Laws x.
908 foil.), ' howbeit they put him to no punishment, because they
be persuaded that it is in no man's power to believe what he list ' ;
and ' no man is to be blamed for reasoning in support of his own
religion V In the public services * no prayers be used, but such as
every man may boldly pronounce without giving offence to any
sect.' He says significantly (p. 143), ' There be that give worship
to a man that was once of excellent virtue or of famous glory, not
only as God, but also the chiefest and highest God. But the most
and the wisest part, rejecting all these, believe that there is a certain
godly power unknown, far above the capacity and reach of man's
wit, dispersed throughout all the world, not in bigness, but in
virtue and power. Him they call the Father of all. To Him
alone they attribute the beginnings, the increasings, the proceed-
1 ' One of our company in my presence was sharply punished. He, as soon
as he was baptised, began, against our wills, with more earnest affection than
wisdom, to reason of Christ's religion, and began to wax so hot in his matter,
that he did not only prefer our religion before all other, but also did despise
and condemn all other, calling them profane, and the followers of them wicked
and devilish, and the children of everlasting damnation. When he had thus
long reasoned the matter, they laid hold on him, accused him, and condemned
him into exile, not as a despiser of religion, but as a seditious person and a
raiser up of dissension among the people ' (p. 145).
ccxxiv Sir Thomas Mores Utopia.
Republic, ings, the changes, and the ends of all things. Neither give they
INTRODUC- any divine honours to any other than him.' So far was More from
T10N. J
sharing the popular beliefs of his time. Yet at the end he reminds
us that he does not in all respects agree with the customs and
opinions of the Utopians which he describes. And we should let
him have the benefit of this saving clause, and not rudely withdraw
the veil behind which he has been pleased to conceal himself.
Nor is he less in advance of popular opinion in his political and
moral speculations. He would like to bring military glory into
contempt; he wou.ld set all sorts of idle people to profitable
occupation, including in the same class, priests, women, noblemen,
gentlemen, and ' sturdy and valiant beggars,' that the labour of all
may be reduced to six hours a day. His dislike of capital punish-
ment, and plans for the reformation of offenders ; his detestation of
priests and lawyers * ; his remark that ' although every one may
hear of ravenous dogs and wolves and cruel man-eaters, it is not
easy to find states that are well and wisely governed,' are curiously
at variance with the notions of his age and indeed with his own life.
There are many points in which he shows a modern feeling and a
prophetic insight like Plato. He is a sanitary reformer ; he main-
tains that civilized states have a right to the soil of waste countries ;
he is inclined to the opinion which places happiness in virtuous
pleasures, but herein, as he thinks, not disagreeing from those
other philosophers who define virtue to be a life according to
nature. He extends the idea of happiness so as to include the
happiness of others ; and he argues ingeniously, ' All men agree
that we ought to make others happy; but if others, how much
more ourselves ! ' And still he thinks that there may be a more
excellent way, but to this no man's reason can attain unless heaven
should inspire him with a higher truth. His ceremonies before
marriage ; his humane proposal that war should be carried on
by assassinating the leaders of the enemy, may be compared to
some of the paradoxes of Plato. He has a charming fancy, like
the affinities of Greeks and barbarians in the Timaeus, that the
Utopians learnt the language of the Greeks with the more readi-
ness because they were originally of the same race with them. He
is penetrated with the spirit of Plato, and quotes or adapts many
1 Compare his satirical observation : ' They (the Utopians) have priests of
exceeding holiness, and therefore very few ' (p. 1 50).
Sir Thomas Mores Utopia. ccxxv
thoughts both from the Republic and from the Timaeus. He pre- Republic.
fers public duties to private, and is somewhat impatient of the
importunity of relations. His citizens have no silver or gold of
their own, but are ready enough to pay them to their mercenaries
(cp. Rep. iv. 422, 423). There is nothing of which he is more con-
temptuous than the love of money. Gold is used for fetters of
criminals, and diamonds and pearls for children's necklaces \
Like Plato he is full of satirical reflections on governments and
princes ; on the state of the world and of knowledge. The hero
of his discourse (Hythloday) is very unwilling to become a minister
of state, considering that he would lose his independence and his
advice would never be heeded 2. He ridicules the new logic of his
time; the Utopians could never be made to understand the
doctrine of Second Intentions s. He is very severe on the sports
of the gentry ; the Utopians count ' hunting the lowest, the vilest,
and the most abject part of butchery.' He quotes the words of
the Republic in which the philosopher is described ' standing out
of the way under a wall until the driving storm of sleet and rain
be overpast,' which admit of a singular application to More's own
fate ; although, writing twenty years before (about the year 1514),
1 When the ambassadors came arrayed in gold and peacocks' feathers ' to
the eyes of all the Utopians except very few, which had been in other countries
for some reasonable cause, all that gorgeousness of apparel seemed shameful
and reproachful. In so much that they most reverently saluted the vilest and
most abject of them for lords — passing over the ambassadors themselves with-
out any honour, judging them by their wearing of golden chains to be bondmen.
You should have seen children also, that had cast away their pearls and
precious stones, when they saw the like sticking upon the ambassadors' caps,
dig and push their mothers under the sides, saying thus to them — " Look,
mother, how great a lubber doth yet wear pearls and precious stones, as
though he were a little child still." But the mother ; yea and that also in
good earnest: "Peace, son," saith she, "I think he be some of the ambas-
sadors' fools " ' (p. 102).
3 Cp. an exquisite passage at p. 35, of which the conclusion is as follows:
' And verily it is naturally given . . . suppressed and ended.'
3 ' For they have not devised one of all those rules of restrictions, amplifica-
tions, and suppositions, very wittily invented in the small Logicals, which
here our children in every place do learn. Furthermore, they were never yet
able to find out the second intentions ; insomuch that none of them all could
ever see man himself in common, as they call him, though he be (as you know)
bigger than was ever any giant, yea, and pointed to of us even with our finger '
(P- 105).
ccxxvi The New Atlantis: The City of the Sun.
Republic, he can hardly be supposed to have foreseen this. There is no
IN™ON.UC* toucn °f satire which strikes deeper than his quiet remark that the
greater part of the precepts of Christ are more at variance with
the lives of ordinary Christians than the discourse of Utopia \
The 'New Atlantis' is only a fragment, and far inferior in
merit to the ' Utopia.' The work is full of ingenuity, but wanting
in creative fancy, and by no means impresses the reader with
a sense of credibility. In some places Lord Bacon is character-
istically different from Sir Thomas More, as, for example, in the
external state which he attributes to the governor of Solomon's
House, whose dress he minutely describes, while to Sir Thomas
More such trappings appear simply ridiculous. Yet, after this
programme of dress, Bacon adds the beautiful trait, ' that he had a
look as though he pitied men.' Several things are borrowed by
him from the Timaeus ; but he has injured the unity of style by
adding thoughts and passages which are taken from the Hebrew
Scriptures.
The 'City of the Sun,' written by Campanella (1568-1639),
a Dominican friar, several years after the 'New Atlantis' of
Bacon, has many resemblances to the Republic of Plato. The
citizens have wives and children in common; their marriages
are of the same temporary sort, and are arranged by the magis-
trates from time to time. They do not, however, adopt his
system of lots, but bring together the best natures, male and
female, ' according to philosophical rules.' The infants until
two years of age are brought up by their mothers in public
temples; and since individuals for the most part educate their
children badly, at the beginning of their third year they are
committed to the care of the State, and are taught at first, not out
of books, but from paintings of all kinds, which are emblazoned
on the walls of the city. The city has six interior circuits of
walls, and an outer wall which is the seventh. On this outer
wall are painted the figures of legislators and philosophers, and
1 ' And yet the most part of them is more dissident from the manners of the
world now a days, than my communication was. But preachers, sly and wily
men, following your counsel (as I suppose) because they saw men evil-willing
to frame their manners to Christ's rule, they have wrested and wried his
doctrine, and, like a rule of lead, have applied it to men's manners, that by
some means at the least way, they might agree together' (p. 66).
The City of the Sun. ccxxvii
on each of the interior walls the symbols or forms of some one Republic.
of the sciences are delineated. The women are, for the most INTRODUC-
TION.
part, trained, like the men, in warlike and other exercises ; but
they have two special occupations of their own. After a battle,
they and the boys soothe and relieve the wounded warriors ;
also they encourage them with embraces and pleasant words
(cp. Plato, Rep. v. 468). Some elements of the Christian or
Catholic religion are preserved among them. The life of the
Apostles is greatly admired by this people because they had
all things in common; and the short prayer which Jesus Christ
taught men is used in their worship. It is a duty of the chief
magistrates to pardon sins, and therefore the whole people make
secret confession of them to the magistrates, and they to their
chief, who is a sort of Rector Metaphysicus ; and by this means
he is well informed ol all that is going on in the minds of men.
After confession, absolution is granted to the citizens collectively,
but no one is mentioned by name. There also exists among
them a practice of perpetual prayer, performed by a succession of
priests, who change every hour. Their religion is a worship
of God in Trinity, that is of Wisdom, Love and Power, but
without any distinction of persons. They behold in the sun
the reflection of His glory ; mere graven images they reject,
refusing to fall under the ' tyranny ' of idolatry.
Many details are given about their customs of eating and
drinking, about their mode of dressing, their employments, their
wars. Campanella looks forward to a new mode of education,
which is to be a study of nature, and not of Aristotle. He would
not have his citizens waste their time in the consideration of
what he calls ' the dead signs of things.' He remarks that he
who knows one science only, does not really know that one
any more than the rest, and insists strongly on the necessity
of a variety of knowledge. More scholars are turned out in the
City of the Sun in one year than by contemporary methods in
ten or fifteen. He evidently believes, like Bacon, that hence-
forward natural science will play a great part in education, a
hope which seems hardly to have been realized, either in our own
or in any former age ; at any rate the fulfilment of it has been
long deferred.
There is a good deal of ingenuity and even originality in this
ccxxviii Eliot's Monarchy of Man.
Republic, work, and a most enlightened spirit pervades it. But it has
INTRODUC- little or no charm of style, and falls very far short of the ' New
TION.
Atlantis' of Bacon, and still more of the ' Utopia' of Sir Thomas
More. It is full of inconsistencies, and though borrowed from
Plato, shows but a superficial acquaintance with his writings. It
is a work such as one might expect to have been written by a
philosopher and man of genius who was also a friar, and who had
spent twenty-seven years of his life in a prison of the Inquisition.
The most interesting feature of the book, common to Plato
and Sir Thomas More, is the deep feeling which is shown by
the writer, of the misery and ignorance prevailing among the
lower classes in his own time. Campanella takes note of Aris-
totle's answer to Plato's community of property, that in a society
where all things are common, no individual would have any
motive to work (Arist. Pol. ii. 5, § 6) : he replies, that his citizens
being happy and contented in themselves (they are required to
work only four hours a day), will have greater regard for their
fellows than exists among men at present. He thinks, like Plato,
that if he abolishes private feelings and interests, a great public
feeling will take their place.
Other writings on ideal states, such as the ' Oceana ' of Harring-
ton, in which the Lord Archon, meaning Cromwell, is described,
not as he was, but as he ought to have been ; or the ' Argenis ' of
Barclay, which is an historical allegory of his own time, are
too unlike Plato to be worth mentioning. More interesting than
either of these, and far more Platonic in style and thought, is
Sir John Eliot's 'Monarchy of Man,' in which the prisoner of
the Tower, no longer able * to be a politician in the land of his
birth,' turns away from politics to view 'that other city which
is within him,' and finds on the very threshold of the grave
that the secret of human happiness is the mastery of self. The
change of government in the time of the English Commonwealth
set men thinking about first principles, and gave rise to many
works of this class. . . . The great original genius of Swift owes
nothing to Plato ; nor is there any trace in the conversation or
in the works of Dr. Johnson of any acquaintance with his writings.
He probably would have refuted Plato without reading him, in
the same fashion in which he supposed himself to have refuted
Bishop Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of matter. If we
The value of Ideals. ccxxix
except the so-called English Platonists, or rather Neo-Platonists, Republic.
who never understood their master, and the writings of Coleridge,
who was to some extent a kindred spirit, Plato has left no
permanent impression on English literature.
VII. Human life and conduct are affected by ideals in the same
way that they are aifected by the examples of eminent men.
Neither the one nor the other are immediately applicable to prac-
tice, but there is a virtue flowing from them which tends to raise
individuals above the common routine of society or trade, and
to elevate States above the mere interests of commerce or the
necessities of self-defence. Like the ideals of art they are
partly framed by the omission of particulars ; they require to
be viewed at a certain distance, and are apt to fade away if we
attempt to approach them. They gain an imaginary distinctness
when embodied in a State or in a system of philosophy, but they
still remain the visions of *a world unrealized.' More striking
and obvious to the ordinary mind are the examples of great men,
who have served their own generation and are remembered in
another. Even in our own family circle there may have been
some one, a woman, or even a child, in whose face has shone
forth a goodness more than human. The ideal then approaches
nearer to us, and we fondly cling to it. The ideal of the past,
whether of our own past lives or of former states of society, has
a singular fascination for the minds of many. Too late we learn
that such ideals cannot be recalled, though the recollection of them
may have a humanizing influence on other times. But the abstrac-
tions of philosophy are to most persons cold and vacant ; they give
light without warmth ; they are like the full moon in the heavens
when there are no stars appearing. Men cannot live by thought
alone ; the world of sense is always breaking in upon them. They
are for the most part confined to a corner of earth, and see but
a little way beyond their own home or place of abode ; they ' do
not lift up their eyes to the hills ' ; they are not awake when
the dawn appears. But in Plato we have reached a height from
which a man may look into the distance (Rep. iv. 445 C) and behold
the future of the world and of philosophy. The ideal of the
State and of the life of the philosopher ; the ideal of an education
ccxxx The future of the race and of the individual.
Republic, continuing through life and extending equally to both sexes ;
IN TRioNUC" tlie *deal °^ tne umtv and correlation of knowledge ; the faith in
good and immortality— are the vacant forms of light on which
Plato is seeking to fix the eye of mankind.
VIII. Two other ideals, which never appeared above the horizon
in Greek Philosophy, float before the minds of men in our own
day : one seen more clearly than formerly, as though each year
and each generation brought us nearer to some great change ; the
other almost in the same degree retiring from view behind the
laws of nature, as if oppressed by them, but still remaining a
silent hope of we know not what hidden in the heart of man. The
first ideal is the future of the human race in this world ; the
second the future of the individual in another. The first is the
more perfect realization of our own present life ; the second, the
abnegation of it : the one, limited by experience, the other,
transcending it. Both of them have been and are powerful
motives of action ; there are a few in whom they have taken the
place of all earthly interests. The hope of a future for the human
race at first sight seems to be the more disinterested, the hope
of individual existence the more egotistical, of the two motives.
But when men have learned to resolve their hope of a future
either for themselves or for the world into the will of God — ' not
my will but Thine,' the difference between them falls away ; and
they may be allowed to make either of them the basis of their
lives, according to their own individual character or temperament.
There is as much faith in the willingness to work for an unseen
future in this world as in another. Neither is it inconceivable
that some rare nature may feel his duty to another generation,
or to another century, almost as strongly as to his own, or that
living always in the presence of God, he may realize another
world as vividly as he does this.
The greatest of all ideals may, or rather must be conceived by
us under similitudes derived from human qualities ; although
sometimes, like the Jewish prophets, we may dash away these
figures of speech and describe the nature of God only in negatives.
These again by degrees acquire a positive meaning. It would
be well, if when meditating on the higher truths either of
The ideal of Divine goodness. ccxxxi
philosophy or religion, we sometimes substituted one form of Republic.
expression for another, lest through the necessities of language
we should become the slaves of mere words.
There is a third ideal, not the same, but akin to these, which has
a place in the home and heart of every believer in the religion of
Christ, and in which men seem to find a nearer and more familiar
truth, the Divine man, the Son of Man, the Saviour of mankind,
Who is the first-born and head of the whole family in heaven and
earth, in Whom the Divine and human, that which is without and
that which is within the range of our earthly faculties, are indisso-
lubly united. Neither is this divine form of goodness wholly
separable from the ideal of the Christian Church, which is said in
the New Testament to be ' His body,' or at variance with those
other images of good which Plato sets before us. We see Him in
a figure only, and of figures of speech we select but a few, and
those the simplest, to be the expression of Him. We behold Him
in a picture, but He is not there. We gather up the fragments of
His discourses, but neither do they represent Him as He truly
was. His dwelling is neither in heaven nor earth, but in the heart
of man. This is that image which Plato saw dimly in the distance,
which, when existing among men, he called, in the language of
Homer, ' the likeness of God ' (Rep. vi. 501 B), the likeness of a
nature which in all ages men have felt to be greater and better
than themselves, and which in endless forms, whether derived
from Scripture or nature, from the witness of history or from the
human heart, regarded as a person or not as a person, with or
without parts or passions, existing in space or not in space, is and
will always continue to be to mankind the Idea of Good.
THE REPUBLIC
BOOK I
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE
SOCRATES, who is the narrator. CEPHALUS.
GLAUCON. THRASYMACHUS.
ADEIMANTUS. CLEITOPHON.
POLEMARCHUS.
And others who are mute auditors.
The scene is laid in the house of Cephalus at the Piraeus ; and the whole
dialogue is narrated by Socrates the day after it actually took place
to Timaeus, Hermocrates, Critias, and a nameless person, who are
introduced in the Timaeus.
Ed. T WENT down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon Republic
327' A the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to 7*
the goddess * ; and also because I wanted to see in what SOCRATES,
manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a
new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the Crates °f
inhabitants ; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not and Giau-
more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and conwith
viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city ; archus
and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced at the
Bendidean
to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on festival,
our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait
for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind,
and said : Polemarchus desires you to wait.
I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will
only wait.
1 Bendis, the Thracian Artemis.
The Home of Polemarchus.
Republic
SOCRATES,
POLEMAR-
CHUS,
GLAUCON,
ADEIMANTUS,
CEPHALUS.
The
equestrian
torch-race.
The
gathering
of friends
at the
house of
Cephalus.
Certainly we will, said Glaucon ; and in a few minutes
Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon's
brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who
had been at the procession.
Polemarchus said to me : I perceive, Socrates, that you
and your companion are already on your way to the city.
You are not far wrong, I said.
But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are ?
Of course.
And are you stronger than all these ? for if not, you will
have to remain where you are.
May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may per-
suade you to let us go ?
But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you ? he
said.
Certainly not, replied Glaucon.
Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be
assured.
Adeimantus added : Has no one told you of the torch-race 328
on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place
in the evening ?
With horses ! I replied : That is a novelty. Will horse-
men carry torches and pass them one to another during the
race?
Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will
be celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see.
Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival ; there
will be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good
talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.
Glaucon said : I suppose, since you insist, that we must.
Very good, I replied.
Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house ; and
there we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and
with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides
the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There
too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had
not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged.
He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on
his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court ; and there
were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle,
The aged Cephalus. 3
upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, Republic
and then he said : —
You don't come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought : CEPHALVS«
J SOCRATES.
If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you
to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city,
and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus. For
let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade
away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of con-
versation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house
your resort and keep company with these young men ; we
are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.
I replied : There is nothing which for my part I like better,
Cephalus, than conversing with aged, men; for I regard
them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may
have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way
is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a
question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived
at that time which the poets call the ' threshold of old age '
— Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give
of it?
329 I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Old age is
Men of my age flock together ; we are birds of a feather, as blame for
the old proverb says ; and at our meetings the tale of my the troubles
acquaintance commonly is — I cannot eat, I cannot drink ; the
pleasures of youth and love are fled away : there was a good
time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life.
Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by
relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their
old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers
seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old
age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old
man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own
experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How
well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer
to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles, —
are you still the man you were ? Peace, he replied ; most The excel-
gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel
as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His cies.
words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem
as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them.
B 2
4
Themistocles and the Seriphian.
Republic
L
CEPHALUS,
SOCRATES.
It is ad-
mitted that
the old, if
they are to
be comfort-
able, must
have a fair
share of
external
goods ;
neither
virtue alone
nor riches
alone can
make an
old man
happy.
Cephalus
has in-
herited
rather than
made a
fortune ; he
is therefore
indifferent
to money.
For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom ;
when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says,
we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only,
but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and
also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to
the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters
and tempers ; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will
hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an
opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out,
that he might go on — Yes, Cephalus, I said ; but I rather
suspect that people in general are not convinced by you
when you speak thus ; they think that old age sits lightly upon
you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you
are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
You are right, he replied ; they are not convinced : and
there is something in what they say; not, however, so much
as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles
answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying
that he was famous, not for his own merits but because he
was an Athenian : ' If you had been a native of my country 330
or I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.' And to
those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the
same reply may be made ; for to the good poor man old age
cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich man ever have
peace with himself.
May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the
most part inherited or acquired by you ?
Acquired ! Socrates ; do you want to know how much I
acquired ? In the art of making money I have been midway
between my father and grandfather: for my grandfather,
whose name I bear, doubled and trebled the value of his
patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I
possess now ; but my father Lysaniasi reduced the property
below what it is at present : and I shall be satisfied if I leave
to these my sons not less but a little more than I received.
That was why I asked you the question, I replied, be-
cause I see that you are indifferent about money, which
is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their
fortunes than of those who have acquired them ; the makers
The real Advantages of Wealth.
of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their Republic
own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems,
or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of SOCRATE&
it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them
and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for
they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth.
That is true, he said.
Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question ? — The advan-
What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you
have reaped from your wealth ?
One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to con- The fear of
vince others. For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a fhefch0*_nd
man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter sciousness
into his mind which he never had before : the tales of a of sm be~
come more
world below and the punishment which is exacted there of vivid in old
deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but ase | and to
now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true : frees a man
either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing from many
nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these
things ; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and
he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to
others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgres-
sions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his
sleep for fear, arid he is filled with dark forebodings. But
331 to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar Thead-
charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age :
' Hope,' he says, ' cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice
and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion
of his journey ;— hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul
of man.'
How admirable are his words ! And the great blessing of
riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is,
that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others,
either intentionally or\mintentionally ; and when he departs to
the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings
due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to
this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contri-
butes; and therefore I say, that, setting one thing against
another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give,
to a man of sense this is in my opinion the greatest.
The first Definition of Justice
Republic
CEPHALUS,
SOCRATES,
POLEMAR-
CHUS.
Justice
to speak
truth and
pay your
debts.
This is the
definition
of Simon-
ides. But
you ought
not on all
occasions
to do
either.
What then
was his
meaning?
Well said, Cephalus, I replied ; but as concerning justice,
what is it? — to speak the truth and to pay your debts — no
more than this ? And even to this are there not exceptions ?
Suppose that a friend when in his right mind has deposited
arms with me and he asks for them when he is not in his
right mind, ought I to give them back to him ? No one would
say that I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any
more than they would say that I ought always to speak the
truth to one who is in his condition.
You are quite right, he replied.
But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts
is not a correct definition of justice.
Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed,
said Polemarchus interposing.
I fear, said Cephalus, that I must go now, for I have to
look after the sacrifices, and I hand over the argument to
Polemarchus and the company.
Is not Polemarchus your heir ? I said.
To be sure, he answered, and went away laughing to the
sacrifices.
Tell me then, O thou heir of the argument, what did
Simonides say, and according to you truly say, about
justice ?
He said that the re-payment of a debt is just, and in saying
so he appears to me to be right.
I should be sorry to doubt the word of such a wise and in-
spired man, but his meaning, though probably clear to you,
is the reverse of clear to me. For he certainly does not
mean, as we were just now saying, that I ought to return a
deposit of arms or of anything else to one who asks for it
when he is not in his right senses ; and yet a deposit cannot 332
be denied to be a debt.
True.
Then when the person who asks me is not in his right
mind I am by no means to make the return ?
Certainly not.
When Simonides said that the repayment of a debt was
justice, he did not mean to include that case ?
Certainly not ; for he thinks that a friend ought always to
do good to a friend and never evil.
is examined and found wanting.
You mean that the return of a deposit of gold which is to Republic
the injury of the receiver, if the two parties are friends, is not L
the repayment of a debt, — that is what you would imagine
him to say ?
Yes.
And are enemies also to receive what we owe to them ?
To be sure, he said, they are to receive what we owe
them, and an enemy, as I take it, owes to an enemy that
which is due or proper to him — that is to say, evil.
Simonides, then, after the manner of poets, would seem to He may
have spoken darkly of the nature of justice ; for he really ^™ "^
meant to say that justice is the giving to each man what is justice gives
proper to him, and this he termed a debt. to frie.nds
That must have been his meaning, he said* good and
By heaven ! I replied ; and if we asked him what due or to enemies
proper thing is given by medicine, and to whom, what answer ^^ 1S
do you think that he would make to us ?
He would surely reply that medicine gives drugs and meat
and drink to human bodies.
And what due or proper thing is given by cookery, and to
what?
Seasoning to food.
And what is that which justice gives, and to whom ?
If, Socrates, we are to be guided at all by the analogy of
the preceding instances, then justice is the art which gives
good to friends and evil to enemies.
That is his meaning then ?
I think so.
And who is best able to do good to his friends and evil to niustra-
his enemies in time of sickness ?
The physician.
Or when they are on a voyage, amid the perils of the sea ?
The pilot.
And in what sort of actions or with a view to what result is
the just man most able to do harm to his enemy and good
to his friend ?
In going to war against the one anxd in making alliances
with the other.
But when a man is well, my dear Polemarchus, there is no
need of a physician ?
8 A further cross-examination.
Republic No.
And he who is not on a voyage has no need of a pilot ?
SOCRATES, N
POLEMAR-
CHUS. Then in time of peace justice will be of no use ?
I am very far from thinking so.
You think that justice may be of use in peace as well as 333
in war ?
Yes.
Like husbandry for the acquisition of corn ?
Yes.
Or like shoemaking for the acquisition of shoes, — that is
what you mean ?
Yes.
And what similar use or power of acquisition has justice in
time of peace ?
justice is In contracts, Socrates, justice is of use.
contracts ^n(* ^v contracts vou mean partnerships ?
Exactly.
But is the just man or the skilful player a more useful and
better partner at a game of draughts ?
The skilful player.
And in the laying of bricks and stones is the just man a
more useful or better partner than the builder ?
Quite the reverse.
Then in what sort of partnership is the just man a better
partner than the harp-player, as in playing the harp the harp-
player is certainly a better partner than the just man ?
In a money partnership.
Yes, Polemarchus, but surely not in the use of money ; for
you do not want a just man to be your counsellor in the pur-
chase or sale of a horse ; a man who is knowing about horses
would be better for that, would he not ?
Certainly.
And when you want to buy a ship, the shipwright or the
pilot would be better ?
True.
Then what is that joint use of silver or gold in which the
especially just man is to be preferred ?
keephi^oT When you want a deposit to be kept safely,
deposits. You mean when money is not wanted, but allowed to lie ?
Justice turns out to be a Thief. 9
Precisely. Republic
That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless ?
That is the inference. SOCRATES,
POLEMAR-
And when you want to keep a pruning-hook safe, then jus- c«us.
tice is useful to the individual and to the state ; but when you But not in
want to use it, then the art of the vine-dresser ? the use of
money;
Clearly. and if so,
And when you want to keep a shield or a lyre, and not to justice is
use them, you would say that justice is useful ; but when you ^
want to use them, then the art of the soldier or of the money or
musician? *«
Certainly. useless.
And so of all other things ; — justice is useful when they
are useless, and useless when they are useful ?
That is the inference.
Then justice is not good for much. But let us consider
this further point : Is not he who can best strike a blow in
a boxing match or in any kind of fighting best able to ward
off a blow?
Certainly.
And he who is most skilful in preventing or escaping1
from a disease is best able to create one ?
True?
And he is the best guard of a camp who is best able to A new
334 steal a march upon the enemy? ^™\ °*s
Certainly. not he who
Then he who is a good keeper of anything is also a good is best able
to do good
best able to
That, I suppose, is to be inferred. do evil?
Then if the just man is good at keeping money, he is
good at stealing it.
That is implied in the argument.
Then after all the just man has turned out to be a thief.
And this is a lesson which I suspect you must have learnt
out of Homer; for he, speaking of Autolycus, the maternal
grandfather of Odysseus, who is a favourite of his, affirms
that
He was excellent above all men in theft and perjury.
And so, you and Homer and Simonides are agreed that
1 Reading <f>v\&£a0Gcu KOI \a0fTv, ovroy, K.T.\.
10
More difficulties.
Republic
I.
SOCRATES,
POLEMAR-
CHUS.
Justice an
art of theft
to be prac-
tised for the
good of
friends and
the harm of
enemies.
But who are
friends and
enemies ?
Mistakes
will some-
times
happen.
Correction
of the defi-
nition.
justice is an art of theft ; to be practised however ' for the
good of friends and for the harm of enemies/ — that was
what you were saying ?
No, certainly not that, though I do not now know what I
did say ; but I still stand by the latter words.
Well, there is another question : By friends and enemies
do we mean those who are so really, or only in seeming ?
Surely, he said, a man may be expected to love those whom
he thinks good, and to hate those whom he thinks evil.
Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil:
many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely ?
That is true.
Then to them the good will be enemies and the evil will
be their friends ?
True.
And in that case they will be right in doing good to the
evil and evil to the good ?
Clearly.
But the good are just and would not do an injustice ?
True.
Then according to your argument it is just to injure those
who do no wrong ?
Nay, Socrates ; the doctrine is immoral.
Then I suppose that we ought to do good to the just and
harm to the unjust?
I like that better.
But see the consequence : — Many a man who is ignorant of
human nature has friends who are bad friends, and in that
case he ought to do harm to them ; and he has good enemies
whom he ought to benefit ; but, if so, we shall be saying the
very opposite of that which we affirmed to be the meaning of
Simonides.
Very true, he said ; and I think that we had better correct
an error into which we seem to have fallen in the use of the
words ' friend ' and ' enemy.'
What was the error, Polemarchus ? I asked.
We assumed that he is a friend who seems to be or who
is thought good.
And how is the error to be corrected ?
We should rather say that he is a friend who is, as well as
A new colour given to the definition. 1 1
335 seems, good ; and that he who seems only, and is not good, Republic
only seems to be and is not a friend ; and of an enemy the
same may be said. SOCRATES,
? .POLEMAR-
You would argue that the good are our friends and the CHUS-
bad our enemies ? To aP-
pearance
we must
And instead of saying simply as we did at first, that it is addreaiity.
just to do good to our friends and harm to our enemies, we friend who
should further say: It is just to do good to our friends when 'is' as well
they are good and harm to our enemies when they are evil ? ^o^And
Yes, that appears to me to be the truth. we should
But ought the just to injure any one at all ? our^ooV0
Undoubtedly he ought to injure those who are both wicked friends and
and his enemies. harm to
When horses are injured, are they improved or deterio- enemies.
rated.
The latter. To harm
Deteriorated, that is to say, in the good qualities of horses, men is to
not Of dogs? Zm^and
Yes, of horses. to injure
And dogs are deteriorated in the good qualities of dogs, makethem
and not of horses ? unjust. But
And will not men who are injured be deteriorated in that injustice.
which is the proper virtue of man ?
Certainly.
And that human virtue is justice ?
To be sure.
Then men who are injured are of necessity made unjust?
That is the result.
But can the musician by his art make men unmusical ? niustra-
Certainly not. tions-
Or the horseman by his art make them bad horsemen ?
Impossible.
And can the just by justice make men unjust, or speaking
generally, can the good by virtue make them bad ?
Assuredly not.
Any more than heat can produce cold ?
It cannot.
Or drought moisture ?
12
Failure of the Definition.
Republic
SOCRATES,
POLEMAR-
CHUS,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
The saying
however
explained
is not to be
attributed
to any good
or wise
roan.
The bru-
tality of
Thrasyma-
chus.
Clearly not.
Nor can the good harm any one ?
Impossible.
And the just is the good ?
Certainly.
Then to injure a friend or any one else is not the act of a
just man, but of the opposite, who is the unjust ?
I think that what you say is quite true, Socrates.
Then if a man says that justice consists in the repayment
of debts, and that good is the debt which a just man owes to
his friends, and evil the debt which he owes to his enemies,
— to say this is not wise ; for it is not true, if, as has been
clearly shown, the injuring of another can be in no case just.
I agree with you, said Polemarchus.
Then you and I are prepared to take up arms against any
one who attributes such a saying to Simonides or Bias or
Pittacus, or any other wise man or seer ?
I am quite ready to do battle at your side, he said.
Shall I tell you whose I believe the saying to be ? 336
Whose?
I believe that Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Is-
menias the Theban, or some other rich and mighty man,
who had a great opinion of his own power, was the first to
say that justice is 'doing good to your friends and harm to
your enemies.'
Most true, he said.
Yes, I said ; but if this definition of justice also breaks
down, what other can be offered ?
Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus
had made an attempt to get the argument into his own hands,
and had been put down by the rest of the company, who
wanted to hear the end. But when Polemarchus and I
had done speaking and there was a pause, he could no
longer hold his peace ; and, gathering himself up, he came
at us like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were
quite panic-stricken at the sight of him.
He roared out to the whole company : What folly, Socrates,
has taken possession of you all ? And why, sillybillies, do
you knock under to one another ? I say that if you want
really to know what justice is, you should not only ask but
The Irony of Socrates. 13
answer, and you should not seek honour to yourself from Republic
the refutation of an opponent, but have your own answer ;
for there is many a one who can ask and cannot answer.
And now I will not have you say that justice is duty or ad-
vantage or profit or gain or interest, for this sort of nonsense
will not do for me ; I must have clearness and accuracy.
I was panic-stricken at his words, and could not look at
him without trembling. Indeed I believe that if I had not
fixed my eye upon him, I should have been struck dumb:
but when I saw his fury rising, I looked at him first, and was
therefore able to reply to him.
Thrasymachus, I said, with a quiver, don't be hard upon us.
Polemarchus and I may have been guilty of a little mistake
in the argument, but I can assure you that the error was not
intentional. If we were seeking for a piece of gold, you
would not imagine that we were ' knocking under to one
another/ and so losing our chance of finding it. And why,
when we are seeking for justice, a thing more precious than
many pieces of gold, do you say that we are weakly yielding
to one another and not doing our utmost to get at the truth ?
Nay, my good friend, we are most willing and anxious to do
so, but the fact is that we cannot. And if so, you people who
know all things should pity us and not be angry with us.
337 How characteristic of Socrates ! he replied, with a bitter
laugh ; — that's your ironical style ! Did I not foresee — have
I not already told you, that whatever he was asked he would
refuse to answer, and try irony or any other shuffle, in order
that he might avoid answering ?
You are a philosopher, Thrasymachus, I replied, and well Socrates
know that if you ask a person what numbers make up twelve, a^answer
taking care to prohibit him whom you ask from answering twice if all true
six, or three times four, or six times two, or four times three, answe-rs ,are
. excluded.
' for this sort of nonsense will not do for me/ — then obviously,
if that is your way of putting the question, no one can answer
you. But suppose that he were to retort, 'Thrasymachus, Thrasyma-
what do you mean? If one of these numbers which you saUed^with
interdict be the true answer to the question, am I falsely his own
to say some other number which is not the right one ?— is weaP°ns-
that your meaning ? ' — How would you answer him ?
Just as if the two cases were at all alike ! he said.
The Irony of Socrates is
Republic
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS,
GLAUCON.
The So-
phist de-
mands pay-
ment for
his instruc-
tions. The
company
are very
willing to
contribute.
Socrates
knows little
or nothing :
how can he
answer ?
And he is
deterred by
the inter-
dict of
Thrasyma-
chus.
Why should they not be ? I replied ; and even if they
are not, but only appear to be so to the person who is asked,
ought he not to say what he thinks, whether you and I forbid
him or not ?
I presume then that you are going to make one of the
interdicted answers ?
I dare say that I may, notwithstanding the danger, if upon
reflection I approve of any of them.
But what if I give you an answer about justice other and
better, he said, than any of these ? What do you deserve to
have done to you ?
Done to me ! — as becomes the ignorant, I must learn from
the wise — that is what I deserve to have done to me.
What, and no payment ! a pleasant notion !
I will pay when I have the money, I replied.
But you have, Socrates, said Glaucon : and you, Thrasyma-
chus, need be under no anxiety about money, for we will all
make a contribution for Socrates.
Yes, he replied, and then Socrates will do as he always
does — refuse to answer himself, but take and pull to pieces
the answer of some one else.
Why, my good friend, I said, how can any one answer who
knows, and says that he knows, just nothing ; and who, even
if he has some faint notions of his own, is told by a man
of authority not to utter them ? The natural thing is, that
the speaker should be some one like yourself who pro- 338
fesses to know and can tell what he knows. Will you then
kindly answer, for the edification of the company and of
myself ?
Glaucon and the rest of the company joined in my request,
and Thrasymachus, as any one might see, was in reality eager
to speak ; for he thought that he had an excellent answer, and
would distinguish himself. But at first he affected to insist
on my answering ; at length he consented to begin. Behold,
he said, the wisdom of Socrates ; he refuses to teach himself)
and goes about learning of others, to -whom he never even
says Thank you.
That I learn of others, I replied, is quite true ; but that
I am ungrateful I wholly deny. Money I have none, and
therefore I pay in praise, which is all I have ; and how ready
too much for Thrasymachus. 1 5
I am to praise any one who appears to me to speak well you Republic
will very soon find out when you answer ; for I expect that
you will answer well.
Listen, then, he said ; I proclaim that justice is nothing
else than the interest of the stronger. And now why do you The dffini'
_ _ _ tion of
not praise me ? But of course you won t. Thrasy-
Let me first understand you, I replied. Justice, as you say, machus:
is the interest of the stronger. What, Thrasymachus, is the t^nterest
meaning of this? You cannot mean to say that because of the
Polydamas, the pancratiast, is stronger than we are, and JJJJCT?61"
finds the eating of beef conducive to his bodily strength, that
to eat beef is therefore equally for our good who are weaker
than he is, and right and just for us ?
That's abominable of you, Socrates ; you take the words in
the sense which is most damaging to the argument.
Not at all, my good sir, I said ; I am trying to understand
them ; and I wish that you would be a little clearer.
Well, he said, have you never heard that forms of govern-
ment differ ; there are tyrannies, and there are democracies,
and there are aristocracies ?
Yes, I know.
And the government is the ruling power in each state ?
Certainly.
And the different forms of government make laws demo- Socrates
cratical, aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several ^J^18
interests ; and these laws, which are made by them for their machus to
own interests, are the justice which they deliver to their explain his
subjects, and him who transgresses them they punish as a
breaker of the law, and unjust. And that is what I mean
when I say that in all states there is the same principle of
justice, which is the interest of the government ; and as the
339 government must be supposed to have power, the only
reasonable conclusion is, that everywhere there is one prin-
ciple of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.
Now I understand you, I said ; and whether you are right
or not I will try to discover. But let me remark, that in
defining justice you have yourself used the word 'interest*
which you forbade me to use. It is true, however, that
in your definition the words ' of the stronger ' are added.
A small addition, you must allow, he said.
i6
Are Words always to be used
Republic
I.
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS,
POLEMAR-
CHUS.
He is dis-
satisfied
with the
expla-
nation ; for
rulers may
And then
the justice
which
makes a
mistake
will turn
out to be
the reverse
of the in-
terest of the
stronger.
Great or small, never mind about that: we must first
enquire whether what you are saying is the truth. Now
we are both agreed that justice is interest of some sort, but
you go on to say ' of the stronger J ; about this addition I am
not so sure, and must therefore consider further.
Proceed.
I will ; and first tell me, Do you admit that it is just for
subjects to obey their rulers ?
I do.
But are the rulers of states absolutely infallible, or are they
sometimes liable to err ?
To be sure, he replied, they are liable to err.
Then in making their laws they may sometimes make
them rightly, and sometimes not ?
True.
When they make them rightly, they make them agreeably
to their interest ; when they are mistaken, contrary to their
interest ; you admit that ?
Yes.
And the laws which they make must be obeyed by their
subjects, — and that is what you call justice ?
Doubtless.
Then justice, according to your argument, is not only
obedience to the interest of the stronger but the reverse ?
What is that you are saying ? he asked.
I am only repeating what you are saying, I believe. But
let us consider : Have we not admitted that the rulers may
be mistaken about their own interest in what they command,
and also that to obey them is justice? Has not that been
admitted ?
Yes.
Then you must also have acknowledged justice not to be for
the interest of the stronger, when the rulers unintentionally
command things to be done which are to their own injury.
For if, as you say, justice is the obedience which the subject
renders to their commands, in that case, O wisest of men, is
there any escape from the conclusion that the weaker are
commanded to do, not what is for the interest, but what is for
the injury of the stronger?
Nothing can be clearer, Socrates, said Polemarchus.
in their strictest sense?
340 Yes, said Cleitophon, interposing, if you are allowed to be
his witness.
But there is no need of any witness, said Polemarchus,
for Thrasymachus himself acknowledges that rulers may
sometimes command what is not for their own interest, and
that for subjects to obey them is justice.
Yes, Polemarchus, — Thrasymachus said that for subjects
to do what was commanded by their rulers is just.
Yes, Cleitophon, but he also said that justice is the
interest of the stronger, and, while admitting both these
propositions, he further acknowledged that the stronger may
command the weaker who are his subjects to do what is not
for his own interest ; whence follows that justice is the injury
quite as much as the interest of the stronger.
But, said Cleitophon, he meant by the interest of the
stronger what the stronger thought to be his interest, — this
was what the weaker had to do ; and this was affirmed by
him to be justice.
Those were not his words, rejoined Polemarchus.
Never mind, I replied, if he now says that they are, let us
accept his statement. Tell me, Thrasymachus, I said, did
you mean by justice what the stronger thought to be his
interest, whether really so or not ?
Certainly not, he said. Do you suppose that I call him
who is mistaken the stronger at the time when he is
mistaken ?
Yes, I said, my impression was that you did so, when you
admitted that the ruler was not infallible but might be some-
times mistaken.
You argue like an informer, Socrates. Do you mean, for
example, that he who is mistaken about the sick is a phy-
sician in that he is mistaken ? or that he who errs in
arithmetic or grammar is an arithmetician or grammarian
at the time when he is making the mistake, in respect of the
mistake? True, we say that the physician or arithmetician
or grammarian has made a mistake, but this is only a way of
speaking; for the fact is that neither the grammarian nor
any other person of skill ever makes a mistake in so far as
he is what his name implies ; they none of them err unless
their skill fails them, and then they cease to be skilled artists.
c
Republic
SOCRATES,
CLEITOPHON,
POLEMAR-
CHUS,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
Cleitophon
tries to
make a
way of
escape for
Thrasy-
machus by
inserting
the words
' thought
to be.'
This eva-
sion is re-
pudiated
by Thra-
symachus ;
who adopts
another
line of
defence :
' No artist
or ruler is
ever mis-
taken qud
artist or
ruler.'
i8
The argument with Thrasymachus
Republic
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
The essen-
tial mean-
ing of
words dis-
tinguished
from their
attributes.
No artist or sage or ruler errs at the time when he is what
his name implies ; though he is commonly said to err, and I
adopted the common mode of speaking. But to be perfectly
accurate, since you are such a lover of accuracy, we should say
that the ruler, in so far as he is a ruler, is unerring, and,
being unerring, always commands that which is for his own 34 1
interest; and the subject is required to execute his com-
mands; and therefore, as I said at first and now repeat,
justice is the interest of the stronger.
Indeed, Thrasymachus, and do I really appear to you to
argue like an informer ?
Certainly, he replied.
And do you suppose that I ask these questions with any
design of injuring you in the argument ?
Nay, he replied, ' suppose ' is not the word — I know it ; but
you will be found out, and by sheer force of argument you
will never prevail.
I shall not make the attempt, my dear nian ; but to avoid
any misunderstanding occurring between us in future, let me
ask, in what sense do you speak of a ruler or stronger whose
interest, as you were saying, he being the superior, it is just
that the inferior should execute — is he a ruler in the popular
or in the strict sense of the term ?
In the strictest of all senses, he said. And now cheat and
play the informer if you can ; I ask no quarter at your hands.
But you never will be able, never.
And do you imagine, I said, that I am such a madman as
to try and cheat Thrasymachus? I might as well shave
a lion.
Why, he said, you made the attempt a minute ago, and you
failed.
Enough, I said, of these civilities. It will be better that I
should ask you a question : Is the physician, taken in that
strict sense of which you are speaking, a healer of the sick
or a maker of money? And remember that I am now
speaking of the true physician.
A healer of the sick, he replied.
And the pilot — that is to say, the true pilot — is he a captain
of sailors or a mere sailor ?
A captain of sailors.
is drawing to a conclusion. 19
The circumstance that he sails in the ship is not to be Republic
taken into account ; neither is he to be called a sailor ; the
name pilot by which he is distinguished has nothing to do
with sailing, but is significant of his skill and of his authority
over the sailors.
Very true, he said.
Now, I said, every art has an interest ?
Certainly.
For which the art has to consider and provide ?
Yes, that is the aim of art.
And the interest of any art is the perfection of it — this and
nothing else?
What do you mean ?
I mean what I may illustrate negatively by the example of
the body. Suppose you were to ask me whether the body is
self-sufficing or has wants, I should reply : Certainly the body
has wants ; for the body may be ill and require to be cured,
and has therefor^ interests to which the art of medicine
ministers ; and this is the origin and intention of medicine,
as you will acknowledge. Am I not right ?
342 Quite right, he replied.
But is the art of medicine or any other art faulty or Art has no
deficient in any quality in the same way that the eye may be ^J^be
deficient in sight or the ear fail of hearing, and therefore corrected,
requires another art to provide for the interests of seeing j^*6^.
and hearing — has art in itself, I say, any similar . liability to traneous
fault or defect, and does every art require another supple- mterest-
mentary art to provide for its interests, and that another and
another without end ? Or have the arts to look only after
their own interests ? Or have they no need either of them-
selves or of another ? — having no faults or defects, they have
no need to correct them, either by the exercise of their own
art or of any other ; they have only to consider the interest
of their subject-matter. For every art remains pure and
faultless while remaining true — that is to say, while perfect
and unimpaired. Take the words in your precise sense, and
tell me whether I am not right.
Yes, clearly.
Then medicine does not consider the interest of medicine, lUustra-
but the interest of the body ?
C 2
20
When he suddenly creates a diversion.
Republic
SOCRATES,
THRASVMA-
CHUS.
The dis-
interested-
ness of
rulers.
The impu-
dence of
Thrasy-
machus.
True, he said.
Nor does the art of horsemanship consider the interests of
the art of horsemanship, but the interests of the horse ;
neither do any other arts care for themselves, for they have
no needs ; they care only for that which is the subject of
their art ?
True, he said.
But surely, Thrasymachus, the arts are the superiors and
rulers of their own subjects?
To this he assented with a good deal of reluctance.
Then, I said, no science or art considers or enjoins the
interest of the stronger or superior, but only the interest
of the subject and weaker ?
He made an attempt to contest this proposition also, but
finally acquiesced.
Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a
physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but
the good of his patient ; for the true physician is also a ruler
having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere
money-maker ; that has been admitted ?
Yes.
And the pilot likewise, in the strict sense of the term, is a
ruler of sailors and not a mere sailor ?
That has been admitted.
And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for
the interest of the sailor who is under him, and not for
his own or the ruler's interest ?
He gave a reluctant ' Yes.'
Then, I said, Thrasymachus, there is no one in any rule
who, in so far as he is a ruler, considers or enjoins what is
for his own interest, but always what is for the interest of his
subject or suitable to his art ; to that he looks, and that alone
he considers in everything which he says and does.
When we had got to this point in the argument, and every 343
one saw that the definition of justice had been completely
upset, Thrasymachus, instead of replying to me, said : Tell
me, Socrates, have you got a nurse ?
Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought
rather to be answering ?
Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your
Instead of answering questions he makes a speech. 21
nose : she has not even taught you to know the shepherd Republic
from the sheep.
What makes you say that ? I replied.
Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens
or tends the sheep or oxen with a view to their own good Thrasyma-
,_ . ° chus dilates
and not to the good of himself or his master ; and you upon the
further imagine that the rulers of states, if they are true advantages
rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that they
are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh,
no ; and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about
the just and unjust as not even to know that justice and the
just are in reality another's good ; that is to say, the interest
of the ruler and stronger, and the loss of the subject and
servant ; and injustice the opposite ; for the unjust is lord
over the truly simple and just: he is the stronger, and
his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his
happiness, which is very far from being their own. Consider
further, most foolish Socrates, that the just is always a loser
in comparison with the unjust. First of all, in private
contracts : wherever the unjust is the partner of the just
you will find that, when the partnership is dissolved, the
unjust man has always more and the just less. Secondly,
in their dealings with the State : when there is an income-tax,
the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same
amount of income ; and when there is anything to be received
the one gains nothing and the other much. Observe also especially
what happens when they take an office ; there is the just man ^j1^^'
neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other losses, and great scale.
getting nothing out of the public, because he is just ; more-
over he is hated by his friends and acquaintance for refusing
to serve them in unlawful ways. But all this is reversed
in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, of
344 injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust
is most apparent ; and my meaning will be most clearly seen
if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the
criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those
who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable — that is to Tyranny.
say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the pro-
perty of others, not little by little but wholesale ; compre-
hending in one, things sacred as well as profane, private
22
Thrasymachus in the hands of Socrates.
Republic
SOCRATES,
CHUS. '
Thrasyma-
speech
wants to
run away,
but is de-
tained by
the com-
pany.
and public ; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected
perpetrating any one of them singly, he would be punished
ancj incur great disgrace — they who do such wrong in par-
ticular cases are called robbers of temples, and man-stealers
and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a man
besides taking away the money of the citizens has made
slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he
is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by
all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of
injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they
may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from
committing it. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, in-
justice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and
freedom and mastery than justice ; and, as I said at first,
justice is the interest of the stronger, whereas injustice is
a man's own profit and interest.
Thrasymachus, when he had thus spoken, having, like a
bath-man, deluged our ears with his words, had a mind to go
away. But the company would not let him; they insisted
tnat ne snouid remain and defend his position ; and I myself
added my own humble request that he would not leave us.
Thrasymachus, I said to him, excellent man, how suggestive
.
are your remarks ! And are you going to run away before
you have fairly taught or learned whether they are true or
not ? Is the attempt to determine the way of man's life so
small a matter in your eyes — to determine how life may be
passed by each one of us to the greatest advantage ?
And do I differ from you, he said, as to the importance of
the enquiry ?
You appear rather, I replied, to have no care or thought
about us, Thrasymachus — whether we live better or worse
from not knowing what you say you know, is to you a matter
of indifference. Prithee, friend, do not keep your knowledge 345
to yourself; we are a large party; and any benefit which you
confer upon us will be amply rewarded. For my own part I
openly declare that I am not convinced, and that I do not
believe injustice to be more gainful than justice, even if un-
controlled and allowed to have free play. For, granting that
there may be an unjust man who is able to commit injustice
either by fraud or force, still this does not convince me of the
The art of payment. 23
superior advantage of injustice, and there may be others who Republic
are in the same predicament with myself. Perhaps we may L
be wrong ; if so, you in your wisdom should convince us that ^^1
we are mistaken in preferring justice to injustice. CHUS.
And how am I to convince you, he said, if you are not The swag-
already convinced by what I have just said ; what more can
I do for you ? Would you have me put the proof bodily into chus.
your souls ?
Heaven forbid ! I said ; I would only ask you to be con-
sistent ; or, if you change, change openly and let there be no
deception. For I must remark, Thrasymachus, if you will
recall what was previously said, that although you began by
defining the true physician in an exact sense, you did not
observe a like exactness when speaking of the shepherd ;
you thought that the shepherd as a shepherd tends the sheep
not with a view to their own good, but like a mere diner or
banquetter with a view to the pleasures of the table ; or,
again, as a trader for sale in the market, and not as a shep-
herd. Yet surely the art of the shepherd is concerned only
with the good of his subjects ; he has only to provide the
best for them, since the perfection of the art is already en-
sured whenever all the requirements of it are satisfied. And
that was what I was saying just now about the ruler. I con-
ceived that the art of the ruler, considered as ruler, whether
in a state or in private life, could only regard the good of his
flock or subjects ; whereas you seem to think that the rulers
in states, that is to say, the true rulers, like being in authority.
Think ! Nay, I am sure of it.
Then why in the case of lesser offices do men never take
them willingly without payment, unless under the idea that
346 they govern for the advantage not of themselves but of
others ? Let me ask you a question : Are not the several The arts
arts different, by reason of their each having a separate
function ? And, my dear illustrious friend, do say what you tions and
think, that we may make a little progress. bTcon-*
Yes, that is the difference, he replied. founded
And each art gives us a particular good and not merely a JJJJ^f^L
general one — medicine, for example, gives us health ; navi- ment which
gation, safety at sea, and so on ? * °™
Yes, he said.
Republic
I.
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
The true
ruler or
artist seeks,
not his own
advantage,
but the
Governments rule for their subjects good,
And the art of payment has the special function of giving
pay : but we do not confuse this with other arts, any more
than the art of the pilot is to be confused with the art of
medicine, because the health of the pilot may be improved by
a sea voyage. You would not be inclined to say, would you,
that navigation is the art of medicine, at least if we are to
adopt your exact use of language ?
Certainly not.
Or because a man is in good health when he receives pay
you would not say that the art of payment is medicine ?
I should not.
Nor would you say that medicine is the art of receiving
pay because a man takes fees when he is engaged in healing ?
Certainly not.
And we have admitted, I said, that the good of each art is
specially confined to the art ?
Yes.
Then, if there be any good which all artists have in com-
mon, that is to be attributed to something of which they all
have the common use ?
True, he replied.
And when the artist is benefited by receiving pay the ad-
vantage is gained by an additional use of the art of pay,
which is not the art professed by him ?
He gave a reluctant assent to this.
Then the pay is not derived by the several artists from
their respective arts. But the truth is, that while the art of
medicine gives health, and the art of the builder builds a
house, another art attends them which is the art of pay.
The various arts may be doing their own business and
benefiting that over which they preside, but would the artist
receive any benefit from his art unless he were paid as well ?
I suppose not.
But does he therefore confer no benefit when he works for
nothing ?
Certainly, he confers a benefit.
Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt
that neither arts nor governments provide for their own
interests ; but, as we were before saying, they rule and pro-
vide for the interests of their subjects who are the weaker
and must therefore be paid. 25
and not the stronger — to their good they attend and not to Republic
the good of the superior. And this is the reason, my dear
Thrasymachus, why, as I was just now saying, no one is
willing to govern ; because no one likes to take in hand the perfection
reformation of evils which are not his concern without re- of his art;
347 muneration. For, in the execution of his work, and in ^ j^ere
giving his orders to another, the true artist does not regard must be
his own interest, but always that of his subjects ; and there- paid'
fore in order that rulers may be willing to rule, they must be
paid in one of three modes of payment, money, or honour, or
a penalty for refusing.
What do you mean, Socrates ? said Glaucon. The first two Three
modes of payment are intelligible enough, but what the penalty n^°^s of
is I do not understand, or how a penalty can be a payment, rulers,
You mean that you do not understand the nature of this ™^J
payment which to the best men is the great inducement to and a
rule ? Of course you know that ambition and avarice are
held to be, as indeed they are, a disgrace ? rule.
Very true.
And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no
attraction for them; good men do not wish to be openly
demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of
hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the
public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being
ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore neces-
sity must be laid upon them, and they must be induced to
serve from the fear of punishment. And this, as I imagine, The penai-
is the reason why the forwardness to take office, instead of Jviiof be-
waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable, ing ruled
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses fe^or.in
to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take
office, not because they would, but because they cannot help
— not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit
or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because Inadt
they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one composed
who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. For there wholly of
. . good men
is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of there would
good men, then to avoid office would be as much an object be a great
of contention as to obtain office is at present; then we should ness to rule.
26
Thrasymachus is put to the question.
Republic
I.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
Thrasyma-
chus main-
tains that
the life of
the unjust
is better
than the
life of the
just.
A paradox
still more
extreme,
have plain proof that the true ruler is not meant by nature
to regard his own interest, but that of his subjects; and
every one who knew this would choose rather to receive a
benefit from another than to have the trouble of conferring
one. So far am I from agreeing with Thrasymachus that
justice is the interest of the stronger. This latter question
need not be further discussed at present ; but when Thrasy-
machus says that the life of the unjust is more advantageous
than that of the just, his new statement appears to me to be
of a far more serious character. Which of us has spoken
truly ? And which sort of life, Glaucon, do you prefer ?
I for my part deem the life of the just to be the more
advantageous, he answered.
Did you hear all the advantages of the unjust which 348
Thrasymachus was rehearsing?
Yes, I heard him, he replied, but he has not convinced me.
Then shall we try to find some way of convincing him, if
we can, that he is saying what is not true ?
Most certainly, he replied.
If, I said, he makes a set speech and we make another
recounting all the advantages of being just, and he answers
and we rejoin, there must be a numbering and measuring of
the goods which are claimed on either side, and in the
end we shall want judges to decide ; but if we proceed in
our enquiry as we lately did, by making admissions to one
another, we shall unite the offices of judge and advocate
in our own persons.
Very good, he said.
And which method do I understand you to prefer ? I said.
That which you propose.
Well, then, Thrasymachus, I said, suppose you begin
at the beginning and answer me. You say that perfect
injustice is more gainful than perfect justice ?
Yes, that is what I say, and I have given you my reasons.
And what is your view about them ? Would you call one
of them virtue and the other vice ?
Certainly.
I suppose that you would call justice virtue and injustice vice?
What a charming notion ! So likely too, seeing that I
affirm injustice to be profitable and justice not.
The just aims at moderation, not at excess. 27
What else then would you say ? Republic
The opposite, he replied.
And would you call justice vice? T^sm*.
No, I would rather say sublime simplicity. CHUS-
Then would you call injustice malignity? thatinjus-
No ; I would rather say discretion. ^u^
And do the unjust appear to you to be wise and good ?
Yes, he said ; at any rate those of them who are able to be
perfectly unjust, and who have the power of subduing states
and nations ; but perhaps you imagine me to be talking
of cutpurses. Even this profession if undetected has ad-
vantages, though they are not to be compared with those of
which I was just now speaking.
I do not think that I misapprehend your meaning, Thrasy-
machus, I replied ; but still I cannot hear without amazement
that you class injustice with wisdom and virtue, and justice
with the opposite.
Certainly, I do so class them.
Now, I said, you are on more substantial and almost
unanswerable ground ; for if the injustice which you were
maintaining to be profitable had been admitted by you as by
others to be vice and deformity, an answer might have been
given to you on received principles ; but now I perceive that
349 you will call injustice honourable and strong, and to the
unjust you will attribute all the qualities which were attributed
by us before to the just, seeing that you do not hesitate to
rank injustice with wisdom and virtue.
You have guessed most infallibly, he replied.
Then I certainly ought not to shrink from going through
with the argument so long as I have reason to think that you,
Thrasymachus, are speaking your real mind ; for I do believe
that you are now in earnest and are not amusing yourself at
our expense.
I may be in earnest or not, but what is that to you ? — to
refute the argument is your business.
Very true, I said ; that is what I have to do : But will you refuted by
be so good as answer yet one more question? Does the *e analogy
just man try to gain any advantage over the just ?
Far otherwise; if he did he would not be the simple
amusing creature which he is.
2.8
No art aims at excess.
Republic
L
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS,
The just
tries to ob-
tain an ad-
vantage
over the
unjust, but
not over
the just ;
the unjust
over both
just and
unjust.
Illustra-
tions.
And would he try to go beyond just action ?
He would not.
And how would he regard the attempt to gain an advantage
over the unjust ; would that be considered by him as just or
unjust ?
He would think it just, and would try to gain the advantage ;
but he would not be able.
Whether he would or would not be able, I said, is not
to the point. My question is only whether the just man,
while refusing to have more than another just man, would
wish and claim to have more than the unjust?
Yes, he would.
And what of the unjust — does he claim to have more than
the just man and to do more than is just ?
Of course, he said, for he claims to have more than all men.
And the unjust man will strive and struggle to obtain more
than the unjust man or action, in order that he may have
more than all ?
True.
We may put the matter thus, I said — the just does not
desire more than his like but more than his unlike, whereas
the unjust desires more than both his like and his unlike ?
Nothing, he said, can be better than that statement.
And the unjust is good and wise, and the just is neither?
Good again, he said.
And is not the unjust like the wise and good and the
just unlike them ?
Of course, he said, he who is of a certain nature, is like
those who are of a certain nature ; he who is not, not.
Each of them, I said, is such as his like is ?
Certainly, he replied.
Very good, Thrasymachus, I said ; and now to take the
case of the arts : you would admit that one man is a musician
and another not a musician ?
Yes.
And which is wise and which is foolish ?
Clearly the musician is wise, and he who is not a musician
is foolish.
And he is good in as far as he is wise, and bad in as far as
he is foolish ?
The final overthrow of Thrasymachus. 29
Yes. Republic
And you would say the same sort of thing of the physician ?
VPS SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
And do you think, my excellent friend, that a musician c»us.
when he adjusts the lyre would desire or claim to exceed or
go beyond a musician in the tightening and loosening the
strings ?
I do not think that he would.
But he would claim to exceed the non-musician ?
Of course.
350 And what would you say of the physician ? In prescribing
meats and drinks would he wish to go beyond another
physician or beyond the practice of medicine ?
He would not.
But he would wish to go beyond the non-physician ?
Yes.
And about knowledge and ignorance in general; see The artist
whether you think that any man who has knowledge ever J^j^
would wish to have the choice of saying or doing more than limits of
another man who has knowledge. Would he not rather say his art :
or do the same as his like in the same case ?
That, I suppose, can hardly be denied.
And what of the ignorant ? would he not desire to have
more than either the knowing or the ignorant ?
I dare say.
And the knowing is wise ?
Yes.
And the wise is good ?
True.
Then the wise and good will not desire to gain more than
his like, but more than his unlike and opposite ?
I suppose so.
Whereas the bad and ignorant will desire to gain more
than both ?
Yes.
But did we not say, Thrasymachus, that the unjust goes
beyond both his like and unlike? Were not these your words?
They were.
And you also said that the just will not go beyond his
like but his unlike ? man does
30 Thrasymachus and Socrates.
Republic Yes.
L Then the just is like the wise and good, and the unjust like
SOCRATES, tne evji an(j ignorant ?
THRASYMA-
CHUS. That is the inference,
not exceed ^nd eacn of them is such as his like is?
the limits of
other just That was admitted.
men. Then the just has turned out to be wise and good and the
unjust evil and ignorant.
Thrasyma- Thrasymachus made all these admissions, not fluently, as
spiring^and * repeat them, but with extreme reluctance; it was a hot
even blush- summer's day, and the perspiration poured from him in
torrents; and then I saw what I had never seen before,
Thrasymachus blushing. As we were now agreed that
justice was virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignor-
ance, I proceeded to another point :
Well, I said, Thrasymachus, that matter is now settled;
but were we not also saying that injustice had strength;
do you remember ?
Yes, I remember, he said, but do not suppose that I
approve of what you are saying or have no answer; if
however I were to answer, you would be quite certain to
accuse me of haranguing ; therefore either permit me to have
my say out, or if you would rather ask, do so, and I will
answer 'Very good/ as they say to story-telling old women,
and will nod 'Yes* arid 'No/
Certainly not, I said, if contrary to your real opinion.
Yes, he said, I will, to please you, since you will not let
me speak. What else would you have ?
Nothing in the world, I said; and if you are so disposed I
will ask and you shall answer.
Proceed.
Then I will repeat the question which I asked before, in
order that our examination of the relative nature of justice 351
and injustice may be carried on regularly. A statement was
made that injustice is stronger and more powerful than
justice, but now justice, having been identified with wisdom
and virtue, is easily shown to be stronger than injustice, if
injustice is ignorance; this can no longer be questioned by
any one. But I want to view the matter, Thrasymachus, in
a different way: You would not deny that a state may be
Injustice a principle of weakness and disunion. 31
unjust and may be unjustly attempting to enslave other Republic
states, or may have already enslaved them, and may be
holding many of them in subjection ?
True, he replied ; and I will add that the best and most
perfectly unjust state will be most likely to do so.
I know, I said, that such was your position ; but what I
would further consider is, whether this power which is
possessed by the superior state can exist or be exercised
without justice or only with justice.
If you are right in your view, and justice is wisdom, then At this
only with justice ; but if I am right, then without justice. tenT^of
I am delighted, Thrasymachus, to see you not only Thrasyma-
nodding assent and dissent, but making answers which are toTmbroveS
quite excellent. Cp. 5. 450
That is out of civility to you, he replied. A> 6' 498 C'
You are very kind, I said ; and would you have the good-
ness also to inform me, whether you think that a state, or an
army, or a band of robbers and thieves, or any other gang of
evil-doers could act at all if they injured one another ?
No indeed, he said, they could not.
But if they abstained from injuring one another, then they
might act together better ?
Yes.
And this is because injustice creates divisions and hatreds
and fighting, and justice imparts harmony and friendship ; is
not that true, Thrasymachus ?
I agree, he said, because I do not wish to quarrel with you. Perfect in-
How good of you, I said ; but I should like to know also Aether in
whether injustice, having this tendency to arouse hatred, state or in-
wherever existing, among slaves or among freemen, will J^J^!
not make them hate one another and set them at variance tiveto
and render them incapable of common action ?
Certainly.
And even if injustice be found in two only, will they not
quarrel and fight, and become enemies to one another and to
the just?
They will.
And suppose injustice abiding in a single person, would
your wisdom say that she loses or that she retains her
natural power ?
The suicidal character of injustice.
Republic
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
Recapitu-
lation.
Let us assume that she retains her power.
Yet is not the power which injustice exercises of such a
nature that wherever she. takes up her abode, whether in a
city, in an army, in a family, or in any other body, that body
is, to begin with, rendered incapable of united action by 352
reason of sedition and distraction ; and does it not become
its own enemy and at variance with all that opposes it, and
with the just ? Is not this the case ?
Yes, certainly.
And is not injustice equally fatal when existing in a single
person ; in the first place rendering him incapable of action
because he is not at unity with himself, and in the second
place making him an enemy to himself and the just ? Is not
that true, Thrasymachus ?
Yes.
And O my friend, I said, surely the gods are just ?
Granted that they are.
But if so, the unjust will be the enemy of the gods, and the
just will be their friend ?
Feast away in triumph, 'and take your fill of the argu-
ment; I will not oppose you, lest I should displease the
company.
Well then, proceed with your answers, and let me have the
remainder of my repast. For we have already shown that
the just are clearly wiser and better and abler than the
unjust, and that the unjust are incapable of common action ;
nay more, that to speak as we did of men who are evil
acting at any time vigorously together, is not strictly true,
for if they had been perfectly evil, they would have laid
hands upon one another; but it is evident that there must
have been some remnant of justice in them, which enabled
them to combine ; if there had not been they would have
injured one another as well as their victims ; they were but
half-villains in their enterprises; for had they been whole
villains, and utterly unjust, they would have been utterly
incapable of action. That, as I believe, is the truth of the
matter, and not what you said at first. But whether the just
have a better and happier life than the unjust is a further
question which we also proposed to consider. I think that
they have, and for the reasons which I have given ; but still
The nature of ends and excellences. 33
I should like to examine further, for no light matter is at
stake, nothing less than the rule of human life.
Proceed. SOCRATES,
I will proceed by asking a question : Would you not say
that a horse has some end ? iiiustra-
tionsof
1 Should. ends and
And the end or use of a horse or of anything would be
that which could not be accomplished, or not so well accom- tory to the
plished, by any other thing ? enquiry
T J J J 1 • , int° the
I do not understand, he said. end and
Let me explain : Can you see, except with the eye ? excellence
Certainly not. s°^he
Or hear, except with the ear ?
No.
These then may be truly said to be the ends of these organs?
They may.
353 But you can cut off a vine-branch with a dagger or with a
chisel, and in many other ways ?
Of course.
And yet not so well as with a pruning-hook made for the
purpose ?
True.
May we not say that this is the end of a pruning-hook ?
We may.
Then now I think you will have no difficulty in under-
standing my meaning when I asked the question whether the
end of anything would be that which could not be accom-
plished, or not so well accomplished, by any other thing ?
I understand your meaning, he said, and assent.
And that to which an end is appointed has also an excel- All things
lence? Need I ask again whether the eye has an end ? which have
J ends have
It has. also virtues
And has not the eye an excellence ? and exce1'
v lences by
* es« which they
And the ear has an end and an excellence also ? fulfil those
T, ends.
True.
And the same is true of all other things ; they have each
of them an end and a special excellence ?
That is so.
Well, and can the eyes fulfil their end if they ate
D
34
Everything has a special end and eoccellence.
Republic
SOCRATES,
THRASYMA-
CHUS.
And the
soul has a
virtue and
an end —
the virtue
justice, the
end happi-
ness.
Hence
justice and
happiness
are neces-
sarily con-
nected.
wanting in their own proper excellence and have a defect
instead ?
How can they, he said, if they are blind and cannot see?
You mean to say, if they have lost their proper excellence,
which is sight ; but I have not arrived at that point yet. I
would rather ask the question more generally, and only en-
quire whether the things which fulfil their ends fulfil them by
their own proper excellence, and fail of fulfilling them by
their own defect ?
Certainly, he replied.
I might say the same of the ears ; when deprived of their
own proper excellence they cannot fulfil their end ?
True.
And the same observation will apply to all other things ?
I agree.
Well ; and has not the soul an end which nothing else can
fulfil? for example, to superintend and command and deli-
berate and the like. Are not these functions proper to the
soul, and can they rightly be assigned to any other ?
To no other.
And is not life to be reckoned among the ends of the soul ?
Assuredly, he said.
And has not the soul an excellence also ?
Yes.
And can she or can she not fulfil her own ends when
deprived of that excellence ?
She cannot.
Then an evil soul must necessarily be an evil ruler and
superintendent, and the good soul a good ruler ?
Yes, necessarily.
And we have admitted that justice is the excellence of the
soul, and injustice the defect of the soul ?
That has been admitted.
Then the just soul and the just man will live well, and the
unjust man will live ill ?
That is what your argument proves.
And he who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who 354
lives ill the reverse of happy ?
Certainly.
Then the just is happy, and the unjust miserable ?
Socrates knows nothing after all. 35
So be it. Republic
But happiness and not misery is profitable.
Of COUrse. ^CRATES,
THRASYMA-
Then, my blessed Thrasymachus, injustice can never be CHUS.
more profitable than justice.
Let this, Socrates, he said, be your entertainment at the
Bendidea.
For which I am indebted to you, I said, now that you have
grown gentle towards me and have left off scolding. Never- Socrates is
theless, I have not been well entertained : but that was my ^pkased
; J with him-
own fault and not yours. As an epicure snatches a taste of self and
every dish which is successively brought to table, he not with the
having allowed himself time to enjoy the one before, so argun
have I gone from one subject to another without having
discovered what I sought at first, the nature of justice. I left
that enquiry and turned away to consider whether justice is
virtue and wisdom or evil and folly; and when there arose a
further question about the comparative advantages of justice
and injustice, I could not refrain from passing on to that.
And the result of the whole discussion has been that I know
nothing at all. For I know not what justice is, and there-
fore I am not likely to know whether it is or is not a virtue,
nor can I say whether the just man is happy or unhappy.
D 2
BOOK II.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The three-
fold divi-
sion of
goods.
WITH these words I was thinking that I had made an end steph.
of the discussion ; but the end, in truth, proved to be only 357
a beginning. For Glaucon, who is always the most pug-
nacious of men, was dissatisfied at Thrasymachus' retire-
ment ; he wanted to have the battle out. So he said to me :
Socrates, do you wish really to persuade us, or only to seem
to have persuaded us, that to be just is always better than to
be unjust ?
I should wish really to persuade you, I replied, if I could.
Then you certainly have not succeeded. Let me ask you
now : — How would you arrange goods — are there not some
which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of
their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and
enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing
follows from them ?
I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.
Is there not also a second class of goods, such as know-
ledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in them-
selves, but also for their results ?
Certainly, I said.
And would you not recognize a third class, such as gym-
nastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician's art ; also
the various ways of money-making — these do us good but we
regard them as disagreeable ; and no one would choose them
for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or
result which flows from them ?
There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask ?
Because I want to know in which of the three classes you
would place justice ?
In the highest class, I replied, — among those goods which 358
The old question resumed. 37
he who would be happy desires both for their own sake and Republic
for the sake of their results.
Then the many are of another mind ; they think that jus-
tice is to be reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods
which are to be pursued for the sake of rewards and of repu-
tation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be
avoided.
I know, I said, that this is their manner of thinking, and
that this was the thesis which Thrasymachus was maintaining
just now, when he censured justice and praised injustice.
But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.
I wish, he said, that you would hear me as well as him, Three
and then I shall see whether you and I agree. For Thra- *£££_
symachus seems to me, like a snake, to have been charmed ment :—
by your voice sooner than he ought to have been ; but to my J- Th^ .na~
mind the nature of justice and injustice have not yet been tice:
made clear. Setting aside their rewards and results, I want 2- Justie.e
i necessity
to know what they are in themselves, and how they inwardly but not a
work in the soul. If you please, then, I will revive the argu-
ment of Thrasymachus. And first I will speak of the nature sonabie-
and origin of justice according to the common view of them, ness of this
Secondly, I will show that all men who practise justice do so
against their will, of necessity, but not as a good. And
thirdly, I will argue that there is reason in this view, for the
life of the unjust is after all better far than the life of the just
— if what they say is true, Socrates, since I myself am not of
their opinion. But still I acknowledge that I am perplexed
when I hear the voices of Thrasymachus and myriads of others
dinning in my ears; and, on the other hand, I have never
yet heard the superiority of justice to injustice maintained by
any one in a satisfactory way. I want to hear justice praised
in respect of itself ; then I shall be satisfied, and you are the
person from whom I think that I am most likely to hear this ;
and therefore I will praise the unjust life to the utmost of my
power, and my manner of speaking will indicate the manner
in which I desire to hear you too praising justice and
censuring injustice. Will you say whether you approve of
my proposal ?
Indeed I do ; nor can I imagine any theme about which a
man of sense would oftener wish to converse.
Republic
II.
GLAUCON.
Justice a
compro-
mise be-
tween do-
ing and
suffering
evil.
The story
of Gyges.
The ring of Gyges.
I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall
begin by speaking, as I proposed, of the nature and origin of
justice.
They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good ; to suffer
injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good.
And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and
have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one 359
and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree
among themselves to have neither ; hence there arise laws
and mutual covenants ; and that which is ordained by law is
termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the
origin and nature of justice ; — it is a mean or compromise,
between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be
punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice
without the power of retaliation ; and justice, being at a
middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but
as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of
men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called
a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were
able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the
received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of
justice.
Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily
and because they have not the power to be unjust will best
appear if we imagine something of this kind : having given
both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will,
let us watch and see whither desire will lead them ; then we
shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be
proceeding along the same road, following their interest,
which all natures deem to be their good, and are only di-
verted into the path of justice by the force of law. The
liberty which we are supposing may be most completely
given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have
been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croesus the Ly-
dian \ According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in
the service of the king of Lydia ; there was a great storm,
and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place
where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he
1 Reading Tvyrj r<p Kpoiffov rov AvSov tepoy&vy.
Who would be just if he could not be found out f 39
descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he Republic
beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he
stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as GLAUCON-
appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on
but a gold ring ; this he took from the finger of the dead and
reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to
custom, that they might send their monthly report about the
flocks to the king ; into their assembly he came having the
ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he
chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when
instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and
they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present.
360 He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he
turned the collet outwards and reappeared ; he made several
trials of the ring, and always with the same result — when he
turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when out-
wards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen
one of the messengers who were sent to the court ; where as
soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help
conspired against the king and slew him, and took the king-
dom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, The appii-
and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other ; no ^ ™Q°f
man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he of Gyges.
would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands
off what was not his own when he could safely take what he
liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any
one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he
would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then
the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust ;
they would both come at last to the same point. And this
we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just,
not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to
him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one
thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For
all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more
profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues
as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If
you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming
invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was
another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a
The just and unjust stripped of appearances.
Republic
II.
GLAUCON.
The unjust
to be
clothed
with power
and repu-
tation.
The just
to be un-
clothed of
all but his
virtue.
most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one
another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another
from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of
this.
Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the
just and unjust, we must isolate them ; there is no other
way ; and how is the isolation to be effected ? I answer :
Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man
entirely just ; nothing is to be taken away from either of
them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work of
their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other
distinguished masters of craft ; like the skilful pilot or
physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps 361
within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able
to recover himself. So let the unjust make his unjust at-
tempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be
great in his injustice : (he who is found out is nobody :) for
the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you
are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man
we must assume the most perfect injustice ; there is to be no
deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most
unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for
justice. If he have taken a false step he must be able to
recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if
any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way
where force is required by his courage and strength, and com-
mand of money and friends. And at his side let us place the
just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschy-
lus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be no
seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and
rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for
the sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards ;
therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no
other covering ; and he must be imagined in a state of life
the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and
let him be thought the worst ; then he will have been put to
the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by
the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him con-
tinue thus to the hour of death ; being just and seeming to
IDC Unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme,
The just in torments, the wicked in prosperity. 41
the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be Republi
given which of them is the happier of the two.
c
Heavens ! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you
polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other,
as if they were two statues.
I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they
are like there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life
which awaits either of them. This I will proceed to describe ;
but as you may think the description a little too coarse, I ask
you to suppose, Socrates, that the words which follow are
not mine. — Let me put them into the mouths of the eulogists
of injustice : They will tell you that the just man who is
thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound — will have
his eyes burnt out ; and, at last, after suffering every kind of
evil, he will be impaled : Then he will understand that he The just
362 ought to seem only, and not to be, just ; the words of J^^^1
Aeschylus maybe more truly spoken of the unjust than of eachexpe-
the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality ; he does not ^^ *at
live with a view to appearances — he wants to be really unjust to seem
and not to seem only :— £*£* to
1 His mind has a soil deep and fertile,
Out of which spring his prudent counsels V
In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule
in the city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage
to whom he will ; also he can trade and deal where he likes, The unjust
and always to his own advantage, because he has no mis- 1^°*^.,.
givings about injustice ; and at every contest, whether in will attain
public or private, he gets the better of his antagonists, and ^^rt
gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his gains he perity.
can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies ; moreover, he
can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly
and magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man
whom he wants to honour in a far better style than the just,
and therefore he is likely to be dearer than they are to the
gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite
in making the life of the unjust better than the life of the just.
I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when
1 Seven against Thebes, 574.
' The temporal dispensation'
Republic
II.
ADEIMANTUS,
SOCRATES.
Adeiman-
tus takes
up the
argument.
Justice is
praised and
injustice
blamed, but
only out of
regard to
their con-
sequences.
The re-
wards and
Adeimantus, his brother, interposed : Socrates, he said, you
do not suppose that there is nothing more to be urged ?
Why, what else is there ? I answered.
The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he
replied.
Well, then, according to the proverb, ' Let brother help
brother ' — if he fails in any part do you assist him ; although
I must confess that Glaucon has already said quite enough
to lay me in the dust, and take from me the power of helping
justice.
Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more :
There is another side to Glaucon's argument about the praise
and censure of justice and injustice, which is equally required
in order to bring out what I believe to be his meaning.
Parents and tutors are always telling their sons and their
wards that they are to be just ; but why ? not for the sake of 363
justice, but for the sake of character and reputation ; in the
hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those
offices, marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated
among the advantages accruing to the unjust from the repu-
tation of justice. More, however,, is made of appearances by
this class of persons than by the others ; for they throw in
the good opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower
of benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the
pious ; and this accords with the testimony of the noble
Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods
make the oaks of the just —
* To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle ;
And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces1,'
and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for
them. And Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks
of one whose fame is —
* As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god,
Maintains justice ; to whom the black earth brings forth
Wheat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit,
And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish V
Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his
son 3 vouchsafe to the just ; they take them down into the ,
Hesiod, Works and Days, 230. 2 Homer, Od. xix. 109.
Eumolpus.
Immoral and impious opinions and beliefs. 43
world below, where they have the saints lying on couches Republic
at a feast, everlastingly drunk, crowned with garlands ; their
idea seems to be that an immortality of drunkenness is the ADEIMANTUS-
highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards yet
further ; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just another
shall survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the hfe<
style in which they praise justice. But about the wicked
there is another strain; they bury them in a slough in
Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve ; also while
they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict
upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the
portion of the just who are reputed to be unjust ; nothing
else does their invention supply. Such is their manner of
praising the one and censuring the other.
Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way Men are
of speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined ale^^s re~
364 to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal that virtue
voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue jfjj9^1
are honourable, but grievous and toilsome ; and that the pleasant.
pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are
only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty
is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty ; and they
are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour
them both in public and private when they are rich or in any
other way influential, while they despise and overlook those
who may be weak and poor, even though acknowledging
them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary
of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and the gods :
they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to
many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked.
And mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and per-
suade them that they have a power committed to them
by the gods of making an atonement for a man's own
or his ancestor's sins by sacrifices or charms, with re-
joicings and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy,
whether just or unjust, at a small cost; with magic arts
and incantations binding heaven, as they say, to execute
their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they
appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of
Hesiod : —
44
The effect on the mind of youth.
Republic
II.
' Vice may be had in abundance without trouble ; the way is
smooth and her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the
ADEIMANTUS. gods have Set toil V
They are
taught that
sins may
be easily
expiated.
The effects
of all this
upon the
youthful
mind.
and a tedious and uphill road : then citing Homer as a
witness that the gods may be influenced by men ; for he
also says : —
* The gods, too, may be turned from their purpose ; and men
pray to them and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing
entreaties, and by libations and the odour of fat, when they have
sinned and transgressed V
And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and
Orpheus, who were children of the Moon and the Muses —
that is what they say — according to which they perform their
ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities,
that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by
sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are
equally at the service of the living and the dead ; the latter
sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains 365
of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.
He proceeded : And now when the young hear all this said
about virtue and vice, and the way in which gods and men
regard them, how are their minds likely to be affected, my
dear Socrates, — those of them, I mean, who are quickwitted,
and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower, and from
all that they hear are prone to draw conclusions as to what
manner of persons they should be and in what way they
should walk if they would make the best of life ? Probably
the youth will say to himself in the words of Pindar —
' Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier
tower which may be a fortress to me all my days ? '
For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also
thought just, profit there is none, but the pain and loss on
the other hand are unmistakeable. But if, though unjust,
I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised
to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyran-
nizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I
must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture
and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my
Hesiod, Works and Days, 287.
2 Homer, Iliad, ix. 493.
' Let us make the best of both worlds' 45
house; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Republic
Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends. But I hear 7/'
some one exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is ADEIMANTUS-
often difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy.
Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we would be
happy, to be the path along which we should proceed. With
a view to concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods
and political clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who
teach the art of persuading courts and assemblies ; and so,
partly by persuasion and partly by force, I shall make un-
lawful gains and not be punished. Still I hear a voice
saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can they
be compelled. But what if there are no gods ? or, suppose
them to have no care of human things — why in either case
should we mind about concealment? And even if there Theexist-
are gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them ^shfonT
only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets ; and known to
these are the very persons who say that they may be in- ^ethr^J|h
fluenced and turned by ' sacrifices and soothing entreaties who like-'
and by offerings.' Let us be consistent then, and believe
both or neither. If the poets speak truly, why then we had maybe
366 better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of injustice; for if we fhna^ea
are just, although we may escape the vengeance of heaven, are very
we shall lose the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust, we Jead? to
shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and
praying and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we
shall not be punished. ' But there is a world below in which
either we or our posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.'
Yes, my friend, will be the reflection, but there are mysteries
and atoning deities, and these have great power. That is
what mighty cities declare ; and the children of the gods,
who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony.
On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice
rather than the worst injustice ? when, if we only unite the
latter with a deceitful regard to appearances, we shall fare to
our mind both with gods and men, in life and after death, as
the most numerous and the highest authorities tell us. Know-
ing all this, Socrates, how can a man who has any superiority
of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to honour
justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears
The impassioned peroration of Adeimantus.
Republic
II.
ADEIMANTUS.
All this,
even if not
absolutely
true, af-
fords great
excuse for
doing
wrong.
Men should
be taught
that justice
is in itself
the greatest
good and
injustice
the greatest
evil.
justice praised ? And even if there should be some one who
is able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied
that justice is best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but
is very ready to forgive them, because he also knows that men
are not just of their own free will ; unless, peradventure, there
be some one whom the divinity within him may have inspired
with a hatred of injustice, or who has attained knowledge of
the truth — but no other man. He only blames injustice who,
owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the
power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that
when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as
far as he can be.
The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the
beginning of the argument, when my brother and I told you
how astonished we were to find that of all the professing
panegyrists of justice — beginning with the ancient heroes of
whom any memorial has been preserved to us, and ending
with the men of our own time — no one has ever blamed
injustice or praised justice except with a view to the glories,
honours, and benefits which flow from them. No one has
ever adequately described either in verse or prose the true
essential nature of either of them abiding in the soul, and
invisible to any human or divine eye ; or shown that of all
the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is
the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had this 367
been the universal strain, had you sought to persuade us of
this from our youth upwards, we should not have been on
the watch to keep one another from doing wrong, but every
one would have been his own watchman, because afraid, if he
did wrong, of harbouring in himself the greatest of evils. I
dare say that Thrasymachus and others would seriously hold
the language which I have been merely repeating, and words
even stronger than these about justice and injustice, grossly,
as I conceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in
this vehement manner, as I must frankly confess to you,
because I want to hear from you the opposite side ; and I
would ask you to show not only the superiority which justice
has over injustice, but what effect they have on the possessor
of them which makes the one to be a good and the other an
evil to him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, to
The genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus. 47
exclude reputations ; for unless you take away from each of Republic
them his true reputation and add on the false, we shall say
that you do not praise justice, but the appearance of it; 5™™?™*'
we shall think that you are only exhorting us to keep in-
justice dark, and that you really agree with Thrasymachus
in thinking that justice is another's good and the interest of
the stronger, and that injustice is a man's own profit and
interest, though injurious to the weaker. Now as you have
admitted that justice is one of that highest class of goods
which are desired indeed for their results, but in a far greater
degree for their own sakes — like sight or hearing or know-
ledge or health, or any other real and natural and not merely
conventional good — I would ask you in your praise of justice
to regard one point only : I mean the essential good and evil
which justice and injustice work in the possessors of them.
Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying
the rewards and honours of the one and abusing the other ;
that is a manner of arguing which, coming from them, I am
ready to tolerate, but from you who have spent your whole life
in the consideration of this question, unless I hear the contrary
from your own lips, I expect something better. And there-
fore, I say, not only prove to us that justice is better than
injustice, but show what they either of them do to the
possessor of them, which makes the one to be a good and
the other an evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men.
I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adei-
mantus, but on hearing these words I was quite delighted,
368 and said : Sons of an illustrious father, that was not a bad
beginning of the Elegiac verses which the admirer of Glaucon
made in honour of you after you had distinguished yourselves
at the battle of Megara : —
*Sons of Ariston,' he sang, 'divine offspring of an illustrious hero.'
The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly Glaucon
divine in being able to argue as you have done for the supe- J^^f61"
riority of injustice, and remaining unconvinced by your own able to
arguments. And I do believe that you are not convinced — argue so
this I infer from your general character, for had I judged uncon-
only from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But ™ced by
cj . . their own
now, the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my arguments
The individiial and the State.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The large
letters.
Justice to
be seen in
the State
more easily
than in the
individual.
difficulty in knowing what to say. For I am in a strait
between two ; on the one hand I feel that I am unequal
to the task ; and my inability is brought home to me by the
fact that you were not satisfied with the answer which I made
to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority
which justice has over injustice. And yet I cannot refuse to
help, while breath and speech remain to me; I am afraid
that there would be an impiety in being present when justice
is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand in her defence.
And therefore I had best give such help as I can.
Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let
the question drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They
wanted to arrive at the truth, first, about the nature of justice
and injustice, and secondly, about their relative advantages.
I told them, what I really thought, that the enquiry would be
of a serious nature, and would require very good eyes.
Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that
we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus ;
suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some
one to read small letters from a distance ; and it occurred to
some one else that they might be found in another place
which was larger and in which the letters were larger— if
they were the same and he could read the larger letters first,
and then proceed to the lesser — this would have been thought
a rare piece of good fortune.
Very true, said Adeimantus ; but how does the illustration
apply to our enquiry ?
I will tell you, I replied ; justice, which is the subject of
our enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the
virtue of an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a
State.
True, he replied.
And is not a State larger than an individual ?
It is.
Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be
larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that
we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as
they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, 369
proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing
them.
The origin of the State. 49
That, he said, is an excellent proposal. Republic
And if we imagine the State in process of creation, we
shall see the justice, and injustice of the State in process
of creation also.
I dare say.
When the State is completed there may be a hope that the
object of our search will be more easily discovered.
Yes, far more easily.
But ought we to attempt to construct one ? I said ; for to
do so, as I am inclined to think, will be a very serious task.
Reflect therefore.
I have reflected, said Adeimantus, and am anxious that
you should proceed.
A State, I said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs The State
of mankind ; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many U^g°u
wants. Can any other origin of a State be imagined ? wants of
There can be no other. men-
Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are
needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose
and another for another; and when these partners and
helpers are gathered together in one habitation the body of
inhabitants is termed a State.
True, he said.
And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and
another receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for
their good.
Very true.
Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State ; and
yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our
invention.
Of course, he replied.
Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is The four or
the condition of life and existence. need^of**
Certainly. life, and the
The second is a dwelling, and the third clothing and the gnds°of ve
like. citizens
True. whoc°r-
respond to
And now let us see how our city will be able to supply them.
this great demand : We may suppose that one man is a
husbandman, another a builder, some one else a weaver —
E
The barest notion of a State.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The divi-
sion of
labour.
The first
citizens
are : — i. a
husband-
man,
shall we add to them a shoemaker, or perhaps some other
purveyor to our bodily wants ?
Quite right.
The barest notion of a State must include four or five men.
Clearly.
And how will they proceed ? Will each bring the result
of his labours into a common stock ? — the individual hus-
bandman, for example, producing for four, and labouring
four times as long and as much as he need in the provision
of food with which he supplies others as well as himself; or
will he have nothing to do with others and not be at the
trouble of producing for them, but provide for himself alone
a fourth of the food in a fourth of the time, and in the 370
remaining three fourths of his time be employed in making
a house or a coat or a pair of shoes, having no partnership
with others, but supplying himself all his own wants ?
Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food
only and not at producing everything.
Probably, I replied, that would be the better way; and
when I hear you say this, I am myself reminded that we are
not all alike ; there are diversities of natures among us which
are adapted to different occupations.
Very true.
And will you have a work better done when the workman
has many occupations, or when he has only one ?
When he has only one.
Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt when
not done at the right time ?
No doubt.
For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of the
business is at leisure ; but the doer must follow up what he
is doing, and make the business his first object.
He must.
And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more
plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man
does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the
right time, and leaves other things.
Undoubtedly.
Then more than four citizens will be required; for the
husbandman will not make his own plough or mattock, or
More than four or Jive citizens are required. 5 1
other implements of agriculture, if they are to be good for any- Republic
thing. Neither will the builder make his tools — and he too 7/'
needs many ; and in like manner the weaver and shoemaker. SocRATES«
„ ADEIMANTUS.
irue.
Then carpenters, and smiths, and many other artisans, will 3.'
be sharers in our little State, which is already beginning to 4- a shoe-
0 maker.
§row? To these
True. must be
Yet even if we add neatherds, shepherds, and other herds- jfaciaT
men, in order that our husbandmen may have oxen to plough penter, 6. a
with, and builders as well as husbandmen may have draught ^"mer-6'0''
cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces and hides, — still our chants,
State will not be very large.
That is true ; yet neither will it be a very small State which
contains all these.
Then, again, there is the situation of the city— to find a place
where nothing need be imported is wellnigh impossible.
Impossible.
Then there must be another class of citizens who will bring
the required supply from another city ?
There must.
371 But if the trader goes empty-handed, having nothing which
they require who would supply his need, he will come back
empty-handed.
That is certain.
And therefore what they produce at home must be not only
enough for themselves, but such both in quantity and quality
as to accommodate those from whom their wants are supplied.
Very true.
Then more husbandmen and more artisans will be required ?
They will.
Not to mention the importers and exporters, who are called
merchants ?
Yes.
Then we shall want merchants ?
We shall.
And if merchandise is to be carried over the sea, skilful
sailors will also be needed, and in considerable numbers ?
Yes, in considerable numbers.
; Then, again, within the city, how will they exchange their
£ 2
52 New wants and new classes.
Republic productions ? To secure such an exchange was, as you will
remember, one of our principal objects when we formed
t^lem into a society and constituted a State.
Clearly they will buy and sell.
Then they will need a market-place, and a money- token
for purposes of exchange.
Certainly.
The origin Suppose now that a husbandman, or an artisan, brings
trade"1 some production to market, and he comes at a time when
there is no one to exchange with him, — is he to leave his
calling and sit idle in the market-place ?
Not at all ; he will find people there who, seeing the want,
undertake the office of salesmen. In well-ordered states they
are commonly those who are the weakest in bodily strength,
and therefore of little use for any other purpose ; their duty is
to be in the market, and to give money in exchange for goods
to those who desire to sell arid to take money from those
who desire to buy.
This want, then, creates a class of retail-traders in our
State. Is not 'retailer* the term which is applied to those
who sit in the market-place engaged in buying and selling,
while those who wander from one city tq another are called
merchants ?
Yes, he said.
And there is another class of servants, who are intellectually
hardly on the level of companionship ; still they have plenty
of bodily strength for labour, which accordingly they sell, and
are called, if I do not mistake, hirelings, hire being the name
which is given to the price of their labour.
True.
Then hirelings will help to make up our population ?
Yes.
And now, Adeimantus, is our State matured and perfected ?
I think so.
Where, then, is justice, and where is injustice, and in what
part of the State did they spring up ?
Probably in the dealings of these citizens with one another. 372
I cannot imagine that they are more likely to be found
any where else.
I dare say that you are right in your suggestion, I said ;
A city of pigs. 53
we had better think the matter out, and not shrink from the Republic
enquiry.
Let us then consider, first of all, what will be their way of SocRATES>
life, now that we have thus established them. Will they not A picture
produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and shoes, and build of primitive
houses for themselves ? And when they are housed, they will llfe*
work, in summer, commonly, stripped and barefoot, but in
winter substantially clothed and shod. They will feed on
barley-meal and flour of wheat, baking and kneading them,
making noble cakes and loaves ; these they will serve up on
a mat of reeds or on clean leaves, themselves reclining the
while upon beds strewn with yew or myrtle And they and
their children will feast, drinking of the wine which they have
made, wearing garlands on their heads, and hymning the '
praises of the gods, in happy converse with one another.
And they will take care that their families do not exceed their
means ; having an eye to poverty or war.
But, said Glaucon, interposing, you have not given them
a relish to their meal.
True, I replied, I had forgotten ; of course they must have
a relish — salt, and olives, and cheese, and they will boil roots
and herbs such as country people prepare; for a dessert
we shall give them figs, and peas, and beans; and they
will roast myrtle- berries and acorns at the fire, drinking in
moderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to
live in peace and health to a good old age, and bequeath a
similar life to their children after them.
Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing for a city
of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts ?
But what would you have, Glaucon ? I replied.
Why, he said, you should give them the ordinary con-
veniences of life. People who are to be comfortable are
accustomed to lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and they should
have sauces and sweets in the modern style.
Yes, I said, now I understand : the question which you A luxurious
would have me consider is, not only how a State, but how a State must
•* be called
luxurious State is created ; and possibly there is no harm in into exist-
this, for in such a State we shall be more likely to see ence-
how justice and injustice originate. In my opinion the true
and healthy constitution of the State is the one which I have
54
Not a mere State but a luxurious State.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
and in this
many new
callings
will be re-
quired.
The terri-
tory of our
State must
be en-
larged; and
hence will
arise war
between us
and our
neigh-
bours.
described. But if you wish also to see a State at fever-heat,
I have no objection. For I suspect that many will not be
satisfied with the simpler way of life. They will be for adding 373
sofas, and tables, and other furniture ; also dainties, and per-
fumes, and incense, and courtesans, and cakes, all these not
of one sort only, but in every variety ; we must go beyond the
necessaries of which I was at first speaking, such as houses,
and clothes, and shoes : the arts of the painter and the
embroiderer will have to be set in motion, and gold and ivory
and all sorts of materials must be procured.
True, he said.
Then we must enlarge our borders; for the original
healthy State is no longer sufficient. Now will the city have
to fill and swell with a multitude of callings which are not
required by any natural want; such as the whole tribe of
hunters and actors, of whom one large class have to do with
forms and colours ; another will be the votaries of music —
poets and their attendant train of rhapsodists, players, dancers,
contractors ; also makers of divers kinds of articles, including
women's dresses. And we shall want more servants. Will
not tutors be also in request, and nurses wet and dry,
tirewomen and barbers, as well as confectioners and cooks ;
and swineherds, too, who were not needed and therefore had
no place in the former edition of our State, but are needed
now ? They must not be forgotten : and there will be
animals of many other kinds, if people eat them.
Certainly.
And living in this way we shall have much greater need of
physicians than before ?
Much greater.
And the country which was enough to support the original
inhabitants will be too small now, and not enough ?
Quite true.
Then a slice of our neighbours' land will be wanted by us
for pasture and tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if,
like ourselves, they exceed the limit of necessity, and give
themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth ?
That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not ?
Most certainly, he replied.
The origin of war. 55
Then, without determining as yet whether war does good Republic
or harm, . thus much we may affirm, that now we have dis- /7>
covered war to be derived from causes which are also the
causes of almost all the evils in States, private as well as
public.
Undoubtedly.
And our State must once more enlarge ; and this time the
enlargement will be nothing short of a whole army, which
374 will have to go out and fight with the invaders for all that we
have, as well as for the things and persons whom we were
describing above. ••.• ",
Why ? he said ; are they not capable of defending them-
selves ?
No, I said ; not if we were right in the principle which War is an
was acknowledged by all of us when we were framing the ^a^can*
State : the principle, as you will remember, was that one be pursued
man cannot practise many arts with success. wlth su,c"
r cess unless
Very true, he said. a man's
But is not war an art ? whole at-
^ . . tentionis
Certainly. devoted to
And an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking ? il« a soldier
^ . cannot be
Quite true. allowed to
And the shoemaker was not allowed by us to be a husband- exercise
man, or a weaver, or a builder— in order that we might have J^t wf"1^
our shoes well made ; but to him and to every other worker own.
was assigned one work for which he was by nature fitted, and
at that he was to continue working all his life long and at no
other; he was not to let opportunities slip, and then he
would become a good workman. Now nothing can be more
important than that the work of a soldier should be well
done. But is war an art so easily acquired that a man may The war-
be a warrior who is also a husbandman, or shoemaker, or requ^e^a
other artisan ; although no one in the world would be a good long ap-
dice or draught player who merely took up the game as a g^nt^
recreation, and had not from his earliest years devoted him- many na-
self to this and nothing else? No tools will make a man a turai gifts.
skilled workman, or master of defence, nor be of any use to
him who has not learned how to handle them, and has never
bestowed any attention upon them. How then will he who
takes up a shield or other implement of war become a good
The soldier should be like a watch-dog,
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
GLADCON.
The selec-
tion of
guardians:
fighter all in a day, whether with heavy-armed or any other
kind of troops ?
Yes, he said, the tools which would teach men their own
use would be beyond price.
And the higher the duties of the guardian, I said, the more
time, and skill, and art, and application will be needed by him?
No doubt, he replied.
Will he not also require natural aptitude for his calling ?
Certainly.
Then it will be our duty to select, if we can, natures which
are fitted for the task of guarding the city ?
It will
And the selection will be no easy matter, I said ; but we
must be brave and do our best.
We must.
Is not the noble youth very like a well-bred dog in respect 375
of guarding and watching ?
What do you mean ?
I mean that both of them ought to be quick to see, and swift
to overtake the enemy when they see him ; and strong too if,
when they have caught him, they have to fight with him.
All these qualities, he replied, will certainly be required by
them.
Well, and your guardian must be brave if he is to fight
well?
Certainly.
And is he likely to be brave who has no spirit, whether
horse or dog or any other animal ? Have you never observed
how invincible and unconquerable is spirit and how the pre-
sence of it makes the soul of any creature to be absolutely
fearless and indomitable ?
I have.
Then now we have a clear notion of the bodily qualities
which are required in the guardian.
True.
And also of the mental ones; his soul is to be full of
spirit ?
Yes.
But are not these spirited natures apt to be savage with
one another, and with everybody else ?
gentle to friends, and dangerous to enemies. 5 7
A difficulty by no means easy to overcome, he replied. Republic
Whereas, I said, they ought to be dangerous to their
enemies, and gentle to their friends ; if not, they will de-
stroy themselves without waiting for their enemies to destroy
them.
True, he said.
What is to be done then ? I said ; how shall we find a
gentle nature which has also a great spirit, for the one is the
contradiction of the other ?
True.
He will not be a good guardian who is wanting in either of The guard-
these two qualities ; and yet the combination of them appears lar^
to be impossible ; and hence we must infer that to be a good opposite
guardian is impossible. qualities of
. . . gentleness
I am afraid that what you say is true, he replied. and spirit.
Here feeling perplexed I began to think over what had
preceded. — My friend, I said, no wonder that we are in a
perplexity ; for we have lost sight of the image which we had
before us.
What do you mean ? he said.
I mean to say that there do exist natures gifted with those
opposite qualities.
And where do you find them ?
Many animals, I replied, furnish examples of them ; our Such a
friend the dog is a very good one : you know that well-bred £o™ mT"
dogs are perfectly gentle to their familiars and acquaintances, be observed
and the reverse to strangers. in the d°£-
Yes, I know.
Then there is nothing impossible or out of the order of
nature in our finding la guardian who has a similar combina-
tion of qualities ?
Certainly not.
Would not he who is fitted to be a guardian, besides the
spirited nature, need to have the qualities of a philosopher ?
I do not apprehend your meaning.
376 The trait of which I am speaking, I replied, may be also
seen in the dog, and is remarkable in the animal.
What trait ?
Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry ; when Jstein^°g
an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has guishes
The dog a philosopher.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON,
ADEIMANTUS.
friend and
enemy by
the crite-
rion of
knowing
and not
knowing :
whereby he
is shown
to be a phi-
losopher.
How are
our citi-
zens to be
reared and
educated?
never done him any harm, nor the other any good. Did this
never strike you as curious ?
The matter never struck me before ; but I quite recognise
the truth of your remark.
And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming ; —
your dog is a true philosopher.
Why?
Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of
an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing.
And must not an animal be a lover of learning who deter-
mines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge
and ignorance ?
Most assuredly.
And is not the love of learning the love of wisdom, which
is philosophy ?
They are the same, he replied.
And may we not say confidently of man ,also, that he who
is likely to be gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must
by nature be a lover of wisdom and knowledge ?
That we may safely affirm.
Then he who ist to be a really good and noble guardian of
the State will require to unite in himself philosophy and
spirit and swiftness and strength ?
Undoubtedly.
Then we have found the desired natures; and now that
we have found them, how are they to be reared and educated ?
Is not this an enquiry which may be expected to throw light
on the greater enquiry which is our final end — How do
justice and injustice grow up in States ? for we do not want
either to omit what is to the point or to draw out the argu-
ment to an inconvenient length.
Adeimantus thought that the enquiry would be of great
service to us.
Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up,
even if somewhat long.
Certainly not.
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling,
and our story shall be the education of our heroes.
By all means.
And what shall be their education ? Can we find a better
Education of two kinds. 59
than the traditional sort? — and this has two divisions, Republic
gymnastic for the body, and music for the soul.
True< SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Shall we begin education with music, and go on to Education
gymnastic afterwards ? divided
By all means. j^f-
And when you speak of music, do you include literature or the body
not -p and music
for the soul.
I do. Music
And literature may be either true or false ? !ncludes
J literature,
V 63. which may
377 And the young should be trained in both kinds, and we £e true or
begin with the false ?
I do not understand your meaning, he said.
You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories
which, though not wholly destitute of truth, are in the main
fictitious ; and these stories are told them when they are not
of an age to learn gymnastics.
Very true.
That was my meaning when I said that we must te"ach
music before gymnastics.
Quite right, he said.
You know also that the beginning is the most important The begin-
part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender JJJ"ft^
thing; for that is the time at which the character is being portant
formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Part of
,_ education.
Quite true.
And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any
casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and
to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the
very opposite of those which we should wish them to have
when they are grown up ?
We cannot.
Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the Works of
writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of {^acld
fiction which is good, and reject the bad ; and we will desire under a
mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones censorship-
only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more
fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but
most of those which are now in use must be discarded.
60
Homer and Hesiod.
Republic
Homer and
bad lies,
that is to
say, they
give false
representa-
tionsof the
gods,
which have
minds of
youth.
Of what tales are you speaking ? he said.
You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said ;
f°r *key are necessarily of the same type, and there is the
same spirit in both of them.
Very likely, he replied ; but I do not as yet know what you
would term the greater.
Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod,
EnC* the FeSt °^ the POets> wno nave ever been tne §reat storv-
tellers of mankind.
gut whicn stories do you mean, he said ; and what fault do
. J
you find with them ?
A fault which is most serious, I said : the fault of telling a
.. . .. ;
*ie> and, what is more, a bad he.
But when is this fault committed ?
Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the
nature of gods and heroes, — as when a painter paints a
portrait not having the shadow of a likeness to the original.
Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blameable ;
but what are the stories which you mean ?
First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high
places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a
bad lie too, — I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did, and
how Cronus retaliated on him \ The doings of Cronus, and 378
the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if
they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young
and thoughtless persons ; if possible, they had better be
buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for
their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery,
and they should sacrifice not a common [Eleusinian] pig, but
some huge and unprocurable victim ; and then the number of
the hearers will be very few indeed.
Why, yes, said he, those stories are, extremely objectionable.
Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our
State ; the young man should not be told that in committing
the worst of crimes he is far from doing anything outrageous ;
an(j jj^ even if he chastises his father when he does wrong,
in whatever manner, he will only be following the example of
the first and greatest among the gods.
1 Hesiod, Theogony, 154, 459.
The immoralities of mythology. 61
I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those Republic
stories are quite unfit to be repeated. n'
Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit ^™ES^
of quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, T!jB1|0f|Bt
should any word be said to them of the wars in heaven, and of about the
the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, for quarrels of
they are not true. No, we shall never mention the battles of aiuHheir
the giants, or let them be embroidered on garments ; and we evil be-
shall be silent about the innumerable other quarrels of gods t^one*
and heroes with their friends and relatives. If they would another
only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is unholy, areuntrue-
and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel
between citizens ; this is what old men and old women should
begin by telling children ; and when they grow up, the poets
also should be told to compose for them in a similar spirit *.
But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother,
or how on another occasion Zeus sent him flying for taking
her part when she was being beaten, and all the battles of the
gods in Homer — these tales must not be admitted into our Andaile-
State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical f^03^
meaning or not. For a young person cannot judge what is tions of
allegorical and what is literal ; anything that he receives into them are
his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalter- stood by
able ; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the youns-
the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.
There you are right, he replied ; but if any one asks where
are such models to be found and of what tales are you
speaking— how shall we answer him ?
379 I said to him, You and I, Adeimantus, at this moment are
not poets, but founders of a State : now the founders of
a State ought to know the general forms in which poets
should cast their tales, and the limits which must be observed
by them, but to make the tales is not their business.
Very true, he said ; but what are these forms of theology
which you mean ?
Something of this kind, I replied: — God is always to be God is to be
represented as he truly is, whatever be the sort of poetry,
epic, lyric or tragic, in which the representation is given. is,
» Right.
1 Placing the comma after ypavvt, and not a
62 The greater forms of theology :
Republic And is he not truly good ? and must he not be represented
7/- as such ?
SOCRATES, Certainly.
ADEIMANTUS. J . .
And no good thing is hurtful ?
No, indeed.
And that which is not hurtful hurts not ?
Certainly not.
And that which hurts not does no evil ?
No.
And can that which does no evil be a cause of evil ?
Impossible.
And the good is advantageous ?
Yes.
And therefore the cause of well-being ?
Yes.
It follows therefore that the good is not the cause of
all things, but of the good only ?
Assuredly.
God, if he Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as
theSauthorS tne manv assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and
of good not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods
only' of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be
attributed to God alone ; of the evils the causes are to be
sought elsewhere, and not in him.
That appears to me to be most true, he said.
The fie- Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who
is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks
'Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other
of evil lots V
and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two
' Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good ; '
but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,
' Him wild hunger drives o'er the beauteous earth.'
And again—
* Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.'
And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties,
1 Iliad xxiv. 527.
I. God is good and the author of good: 2. God is true. 63
which was really the work of Pandarus \ was brought about Republic
by Athene and Zeus, or that the strife and contention of the IL
gods was instigated by Themis and Zeus 2, he shall not have
our approval ; neither will we allow our young men to hear
the words of Aeschylus, that
380 « God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy
a house.'
And if a poet writes of the sufferings of Niobe — the subject
of the tragedy in which these iambic verses occur — or
of the house of Pelops, or of the Trojan war or on any
similar theme, either we must not permit him to say that
these are the works of God, or if they are of God, he must
devise some explanation of them such as we are seeking : he Only that
must say that God did what was just and right, and they fsv|Jf^Ch
were the better for being punished ; but that those who are nature of
punished are miserable, and that God is the author of their Punish~
ment to be
misery — the poet is not to be permitted to say; though he attributed
may say that the wicked are miserable because they require to God-
to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment
from God ; but that God being good is the author of evil to
any one is to be strenuously denied, and not to be said or
sung or heard in verse or prose by any one whether old or
young in any well-ordered commonwealth. Such a fiction is
suicidal, ruinous, impious.
I agree with you, he replied, and am ready to give my
assent to the law.
Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning
the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to
conform, — that God is not the author of all things, but of
good only.
That will do, he said.
And what do you think of a second principle ? Shall I ask
you whether God is a magician, and of a nature to appear
insidiously now in one shape, and now in another — some-
times himself changing and passing into many forms, some-
times deceiving us with the semblance of such transforma-
tions ; or is he one and the same immutably fixed in his own
proper image ?
1 Iliad ii. 69. » Ib. xx.
The Divine nature incapable of change.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Things
must be
changed
either by
another or
by them-
selves.
But God
cannot be
changed by
other; and
will not be
changed by
himself.
I cannot answer you, he said, without more thought.
Well, I said ; but if we suppose a change in anything, that
change must be effected either by the thing itself, or by some
other thing ?
Most certainly.
And things which are at their best are also least liable to
be altered or discomposed ; for example, when healthiest and
strongest, the human frame is least liable to be affected by
meats and drinks, and the plant which is in the fullest vigour
also suffers least from winds or the heat of the sun or any
similar causes.
Of course.
And will not the bravest and wisest soul be least confused 381
or deranged by any external influence ?
True.
And the same principle, as I should suppose, applies to
all composite things— furniture, houses, garments: when
good and well made, they are least altered by time and
circumstances.
Very true.
Then everything which is good, whether made by art or
nature, or both, is least liable to suffer change from without ?
True.
But surely God and the things of God are in every way
perfect ?
Of course they are.
Then he can hardly be compelled by external influence to
take many shapes ?
He cannot.
But may he not change and transform himself?
Clearly, he said, that must be the case if he is changed
at all.
And will he then change himself for the better and fairer,
or for the worse and more unsightly ?
If he change at all he can only change for the worse, for we
cannot suppose him to be deficient either in virtue or beauty.
Very true, Adeimantus ; but then, would any one, whether
God or man, desire to make himself worse ?
Impossible.
Then it is impossible that God should ever be willing to
The falsehoods of the poets. 65
change ; being, as is supposed, the fairest and best that is Republic
conceivable, every God remains absolutely and for ever in
his OWn form. SOCRATES,
. . ADEIMANTUS.
That necessarily follows, he said, in my judgment.
Then, I said, my dear friend, let none of the poets tell us
that
' The gods, taking the disguise of strangers from other lands,
walk up and down cities in all sorts of forms * ; '
and let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, neither let any
one, either in tragedy or in any other kind of poetry, in-
troduce Here disguised in the likeness of a priestess asking
an alms
' For the life-giving daughters of Inachus the river of Argos ; '
— let us have no more lies of that sort. Neither must we
have mothers under the influence of the poets scaring
their children with a bad version of these myths — telling
how certain gods, as they say, 'Go about by night in
the likeness of so many strangers and in divers forms;*
but let them take heed lest they make cowards of their
children, and at the same time speak blasphemy against
the gods.
Heaven forbid, he said.
But although the gods are themselves unchangeable, still
by witchcraft and deception they may make us think that
they appear in various forms ?
Perhaps, he replied.
Well, but can you imagine that God will be willing to lie, Nor will he
whether in word or deed, or to put forth a phantom of ^er^_
himself? sentation
382 I cannot say, he replied. of himself.
Do you not know, I said, that the true lie, if such an
expression may be allowed, is hated of gods and men ?
What do you mean ? he said.
I mean that no one is willingly deceived in that which is
the truest and highest part of himself, or about the truest
and highest matters ; there, above all, he is most afraid of a
lie having possession of him.
1 Horn. Od. xvii. 485.
F
66
The lie in the soul.
Republic
II.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The true
lie is
equally
hated both
by gods
and men ;
the re-
medial or
preventive
lie is com-
paratively
innocent,
but God
can have
no need
of it.
Still, he said, I do not comprehend you.
The reason is, I replied, that you attribute some profound
meaning to my words ; but I am only saying that deception,
or being deceived or uninformed about the highest realities in
the highest part of themselves, which is the soul, and in that
part of them to have and to hold the lie, is what mankind
least like ; — that, I say, is what they utterly detest.
There is nothing more hateful to them.
And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the
soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie ; for
the lie in words is only a kind of imitation and shadowy
image of a previous affection of the soul, not pure unadul-
terated falsehood. Am I not right ?
Perfectly right.
The true lie is hated not only by the gods, but also by
men?
Yes.
Whereas the lie in words is in certain cases useful and not
hateful ; in dealing with enemies — that would be an instance ;
or again, when those whom we call our friends in a fit of
madness or illusion are going to do some harm, then it is
useful and is a sort of medicine or preventive ; also in the
tales of mythology, of which we were just now speaking —
because we do not know the truth about ancient times, we
make falsehood as much like truth as we can, and so turn
it to account.
Very true, he said.
But can any of these reasons apply to God? Can we
suppose that he is ignorant of antiquity, and therefore has
recourse to invention ?
That would be ridiculous, he said.
Then the lying poet has no place in our idea of God ?
I should say not.
Or perhaps he may tell a lie because he is afraid of
enemies ?
That is inconceivable.
But he may have friends who are senseless or mad ?
But no mad or senseless person can be a friend of God.
Then no motive can be imagined why God should lie ?
None whatever.
God is truth. 67
Then the superhuman and divine is absolutely incapable of Republic
falsehood? 7/*
YPC SOCRATES,
Then is God perfectly simple and true both in word and*
deed * ; he changes not ; he deceives not, either by sign or
word, by dream or waking vision.
383 Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own.
You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second
type or form in which we should write and speak about divine
things. The gods are not magicians who transform them-
selves, neither do they deceive mankind in any way.
I grant that.
Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not Away then
admire the lying dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon ;
neither will we praise the verses of Aeschylus in which Ofthe
Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials
* Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were to
be long, and to know no sickness. And when he had spoken of
my lot as in all things blessed of heaven he raised a note of
triumph and cheered my soul. And I thought that the word of
Phoebus, being divine and full of prophecy, would not fail. And
now he himself who uttered the strain, he who was present at the
banquet, and who said this— he it is who has slain my son V
These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which
will arouse our anger; and he who utters them shall be
refused a chorus ; neither shall we allow teachers to make
use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we
do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true
worshippers of the gods and like them.
I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise
to make them my laws.
1 Omitting /cora Qavravias. 2 From a lost play.
F 2
BOOK III
Republic
IIL
SOCRATES,
lessons of
mythology.
The de-
oftheworld
below in
Homer.
SUCH then, I said, are our principles of theology— some steph.
tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our 386
disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean them to
honour faG gO(js ancj ^eir parents, and to value friendship
with one another.
Yes ; and I think that our principles are right, he said.
gut ^ ^Gy are to be courageous, must they not learn other
lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take
away the fear of death ? Can any man be courageous who
has the fear of death in him ?
Certainly not, he said.
And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in
battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world
below to be real and terrible ?
Impossible.
Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this
C^aSS °^ ta^CS ES WC^ &S °VGT ^ others> anc* ^eS t^iem not
simply to revile, but rather to commend the world below,
intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and
will do harm to our future warriors.
That will be our duty, he said.
Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious
passages, beginning with the verses,
* I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless
man than rule over all the dead who have come to nought V
We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto
feared,
' Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor
should be seen both of mortals and immortals V
1 Od. xi. 489.
a II. xx. 64.
The teaching of the poets about Hades. 69
And again : — Republic
' O heavens ! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and
ghostly form but no mind at all 1 ! ' SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS*
Again of Tiresias : —
1 [To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,] that he
alone should be wise ; but the other souls are flitting shades V
Again : —
' The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamenting
her fate, leaving manhood and youth V
Again : —
387 'And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the
earth V
And,—
'As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has
dropped out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling
and cling to one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold together
as they moved V
And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be Such tales
angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because
they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but
because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are
they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be
free, and who should fear slavery more than death.
Undoubtedly.
Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling
names which describe the world below — Cocytus and Styx,
ghosts under the earth, and sapless shades, and any similar
words of which the very mention causes a shudder to pass
through the inmost soul of him who hears them. I do not
say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some
kind ; but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians
may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them.
There is a real danger, he said.
Then we must have no more of them.
True.
Another and a nobler strain must be composed and sung
by us.
1 II. xxiii. 103. 2 Od. x. 495. 3 II. xvi. 856.
4 Ib. xxiii. 100. 5 Od. xxiv. 6.
70 The reform of Mythology.
Republic Clearly.
And shall we proceed to get rid of the weepings and wail-
SOCRATES, • f famous men ?
ADEIMANTUS. °
The eife- They will go with the rest.
minate and But shall we be right in getting rid of them ? Reflect : our
strains of principle is that the good man will not consider death terrible
famous to any other good man who is his comrade.
^etmoreof YeS '> that ls °Ur PrindPle-
the gods, And therefore he will not sorrow for his departed friend as
tetarish though he had suffered anything terrible ?
ed. He will not.
Such an one, as we further maintain, is sufficient for him-
self and his own happiness, and therefore is least in need of
other men.
True, he said.
And for this reason the loss of a son or brother, or the
deprivation of fortune, is to him of all men least terrible.
Assuredly.
And therefore he will be least likely to lament, and will
bear with the greatest equanimity any misfortune of this sort
which may befall him.
Yes, he will feel such a misfortune far less than another.
Then we shall be right in getting rid of the lamentations
of famous men, and making them over to women (and not
even to women who are good for anything), or to men of a 388
baser sort, that those who are being educated by us to be the
defenders of their country may scorn to do the like.
That will be very right.
Such are Then we will once more entreat Homer and the other
rt*AcSs Poets not to depict Achilles1, who is the son of a goddess,
and Priam,' first lying on his side, then on his back, and then on his face ;
then starting up and sailing in a frenzy along the shores of
the barren sea ; now taking the sooty ashes in both his
hands2 and pouring them over his head, or weeping and
wailing in the various modes which Homer has delineated.
Nor should he describe Priam the kinsman of the gods as
praying and beseeching,
* Rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by his name3.'
1 II. xxiv. 10. 2 Ib. xviii. 23. 3 Ib. xxii. 414.
The gods weeping and laughing. 71
Still more earnestly will we beg of him at all events not to Republic
introduce the gods lamenting and saying,
' Alas ! my misery ! Alas ! that I bore the bravest to my sorrow V AD?IMANTUS.
But if he must introduce the gods, at any rate let him not andofZeus
dare so completely to misrepresent the greatest of the gods, ^ehddT
as to make him say — the fate of
* O heavens ! with my eyes verily I behold a dear friend of mine sarpedon
chased round and round the city, and my heart is sorrowful V
Or again : —
* Woe is me that I am fated to have Sarpedon, dearest of men to
me, subdued at the hands of Patroclus the son of Menoetius V
For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to
such unworthy representations of the gods, instead of laugh-
ing at them as they ought, hardly will any of them deem that
he himself, being but a man, can be dishonoured by similar
actions ; neither will he rebuke any inclination which may
arise in his mind to say and do the like. And instead of
having any shame or self-control, he will be always whining
and lamenting on slight occasions.
Yes, he said, that is most true.
Yes, I replied ; but that surely is what ought not to be, as
the argument has just proved to us; and by that proof we
must abide until it is disproved by a better.
It ought not to be.
Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For Neither are
a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost J^t-cTce"
always produces a violent reaction. encouraged
So I believe. £±,*
Then persons of worth, even if only mortal men, must not pie of the
be represented as overcome by laughter, and still less must
such a representation of the gods be allowed.
389 Still less of the gods, as you say, he replied.
Then we shall not suffer such an expression to be used
about the gods as that of Homer when he describes how
' Inextinguishable laughter arose among the blessed gods, when
they saw Hephaestus bustling about the mansion V
On your views, we must not admit them.
1 II. xviii. 54. 2 Ib. xxii. 168. 8 Ib. xvi. 433. 4 Ib. i. 599.
The privilege of lying confined to the rulers.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Our youth
must be
truthful,
and also
temperate.
On my views, if you like to father them on me ; that we
must not admit them is certain.
Again, truth should be highly valued ; if, as we were say-
ing, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine
to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted
to physicians ; private individuals have no business with
them.
Clearly not, he said.
Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the
rulers of the State should be the persons ; and they, in their
dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be
allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else should
meddle with anything of the kind ; and although the rulers
have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return
is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or
the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his
own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for
a sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the
ship and the rest of the crew, and how things are going with
himself or his fellow sailors.
Most true, he said.
If, then, the ruler catches anybody beside himself lying in
the State,
* Any of the craftsmen, whether he be priest or physician or
carpenter V
he will punish him for introducing a practice which is equally
subversive and destructive of ship or State.
Most certainly, he said, if our idea of the State is ever
carried out 2.
In the next place our youth must be temperate ?
Certainly.
Are not the chief elements of temperance, speaking gener-
ally, obedience to commanders and self-control in sensual
pleasures ?
True.
Then we shall approve such language as that of Diomede
in Homer,
* Friend, sit still and obey my word V
1 Od. xvii. 383 sq. 8 Or, 'if his words are accompanied by actions.' 3 II. iv. 41 2.
Some ignoble verses; also a better strain heard. 73
and the verses which follow, Republic
III.
' The Greeks marched breathing prowess \ CRATES
. . . . in silent awe of their leaders2,' ADEIMANTUS.
and other sentiments of the same kind.
We shall.
What of this line,
* O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog and the heart of
a stag3,'
390 and of the words which follow ? Would you say that these,
or any similar impertinences which private individuals are
supposed to address to their rulers, whether in verse or
prose, are well or ill spoken ?
They are ill spoken.
They may very possibly afford some amusement, but they
do not conduce to temperance. And therefore they are
likely to do harm to our young men — you would agree with
me there ?
Yes.
And then, again, to make the wisest of men say that nothing The praises
in his opinion is more glorious than of eating
and dnnk-
' When the tables are full of bread and meat, and the cup-bearer in£» and the
carries round wine which he draws from the bowl and pours into J
r improper
the cups4;' behaviour
. . ,, . r of Zeus and
is it fit or conducive to temperance for a young man to hear Here, are
such words ? Or the verse not to be
repeated to
4 The saddest of fates is to die and meet destiny from hunger 5 ' ? the young.
What would you say again to the tale of Zeus, who, while
other gods and men were asleep and he the only person
awake, lay devising plans, but forgot them all in a moment '
through his lust, and was so completely overcome at the
sight of Here that he would not even go into the hut, but
wanted to lie with her on the ground, declaring that he had
never been in such a state of rapture before, even when they
first met one another
' Without the knowledge of their parents 6 ; '
1 Od. iii. 8. 2 Ib. iv. 431. 3 Ib. i. 225.
4 Ib. ix. 8. 5 Ib. xii. 342. « II. xiv. 281.
74 Bribery, insolence, lust, and other vices
Republic or that other tale of how Hephaestus, because of similar
goings on, cast a chain around Ares and Aphrodite * ?
Indeed, he said, I am strongly of opinion that they ought
The inde- nOt to near tnat Sort °^ thing.
cent tale of But any deeds of endurance which are done or told by
Aphrodite ^amous men> these they ought to see and hear; as, for
The oppo- example, what is said in the verses,
ofenduf1 * He smote his breast, and thus reproached his heart,
ranee. Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured2!'
Certainly, he said.
In the next place, we must not let them be receivers of gifts
or lovers of money.
Certainly not.
Neither must we sing to them of
'Gifts persuading gods, and persuading reverend kings3.'
Condemna- Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or
Achilles deemed to have given his pupil good counsel when he told
and Phoe- him that he should take the gifts of the Greeks and assist
them 4 ; but that without a gift he should not lay aside his
anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge Achilles
himself to have been such a lover of money that he took
Agamemnon's gifts, or that when he had received payment
he restored the dead body of Hector, but that without
payment he was unwilling to do so 5.
Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can 391
be approved.
Loving Homer as I do6, I hardly like to say that in
attributing these feelings to Achilles, or in believing that
they are truly attributed to him, he is guilty of downright
impiety. As little can I believe the narrative of his insolence
to Apollo, where he says,
'Thou hast wronged me, O far-darter, most abominable of
deities. Verily I would be even with thee, if I had only the
power 7 ; '
or his insubordination to the river-god 8, on whose divinity
he is ready to lay hands ; or his offering to the dead Patroclus
1 Od. viii. 266. 2 Ib. xx. 17.
3 Quoted by Suidas as attributed to Hesiod. 4 II. ix. 515. 5 Ib. xxiv. 175.
6 Cf. infra, x. 595. 7 H. xxii. 15 sq. 8 Ib. xxi. 130, 223 sq.
should have no place among the gods.
75
of his own hair \ which had been previously dedicated to the
other river-god Spercheius, and that he actually performed
this vow ; or that he dragged Hector round the tomb of
Patroclus 2, and slaughtered the captives at the pyre 3 ; of all
this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can
allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron's
pupil, the son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the
gentlest of men and third in descent from Zeus, was so dis-
ordered in his wits as to be at one time the slave of two
seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted
by avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods
and men.
You are quite right, he replied.
And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be re-
peated, the tale of Theseus son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous
son of Zeus, going forth as they did to perpetrate a horrid
rape; or of any other hero or son of a god daring to do such
impious and dreadful things as they falsely ascribe to them in
our day : and let us further compel the poets to declare either
that these acts were not done by them, or that they were not
the sons of gods ; — both in the same breath they shall not
be permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to
persuade our youth that the gods are the authors of evil, and
that heroes are no better than men — sentiments which, as we
were saying, are neither pious nor true, for we have already
proved that evil cannot come from the gods.
Assuredly not.
And further they are likely to have a bad effect on those
who hear them ; for everybody will begin to excuse his own
vices when he is convinced that similar wickednesses are
always being perpetrated by —
' The kindred of the gods, the relatives of Zeus, whose ancestral
altar, the altar of Zeus, is aloft in air on the peak of Ida,'
and who have
' the blood of deities yet flowing in their veins V
And therefore let us put an end to such tales, lest they
392 engender laxity of morals among the young.
1 II. xxiii. 151. 2 Ib. xxii. 394. 3 Ib. xxiii. 175.
* From the Niobe of Aeschylus.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The im-
pious be-
haviour of
Achilles to
Apollo and
the river-
gods ; his
cruelty.
The tale of
Theseus
and Peiri-
thous.
The bad
effect of
these my-
thological
tales upon
the young.
76 The styles of poetry.
Republic By all means, he replied.
But now that we are determining what classes of subjects
AOTMANTUS **^ or are not to ^e sPoken of» let us see whether any have
been omitted by us. The manner in which gods and demigods
and heroes and the world below should be treated has been
already laid down.
Very true.
Misstate- And what shall we say about men? That is clearly the
th^oets remaining portion of our subject.
about men. Clearly so.
But we are not in a condition to answer this question
at present, my friend.
Why not ?
Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that
about men poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the
gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are
often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is
profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man's
own loss and another's gain — these things we shall forbid
them to utter, and command them to sing and say the
opposite.
To be sure we shall, he replied.
But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall
maintain that you have implied the principle for which we
have been all along contending.
I grant the truth of your inference.
That such things are or are not to be said about men is a
question which we cannot determine until we have discovered
what justice is, and how naturally advantageous to the
possessor, whether he seem to be just or not.
Most true, he said.
Enough of the subjects of poetry : let us now speak of the
style; and when this has been considered, both matter and
manner will have been completely treated.
I do not understand what you mean, said Adeimantus.
Then I must make you understand ; and perhaps I may be
more intelligible if I put the matter in this way. You are
aware, I suppose, that all mythology and poetry is a narration
of events, either past, present, or to come ?
Certainly, he replied.
Difference between Epic and Dramatic poetry. 77
And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, Republic
or a union of the two ?
That again, he said, I do not quite understand.
I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have Anal sisof
so much difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad the drama-
speaker, therefore, I will not take the whole of the subject, Jj^16™3111
but will break a piece off in illustration of my meaning. You poetry,
know the first lines of the Iliad, in which the poet says that
393 Chryses prayed Agamemnon to release his daughter, and
that Agamemnon flew into a passion with him ; whereupon
Chryses, failing of his object, invoked the anger of the God
against the Achaeans. Now as far as these lines,
'And he prayed all the Greeks, but especially the two sons
of Atreus, the chiefs of the people,'
the poet is speaking in his own person ; he never leads us to
suppose that he is any one else. But in what follows he
takes the person of Chryses, and then he does all that he can
to make us believe that the speaker is not Homer, but the
aged priest himself. And in this double form he has cast the
entire narrative of the events which occurred at Troy and in
Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey.
Yes.
And a narrative it remains both in the speeches which the
poet recites from time to time and in the intermediate
passages ?
Quite true.
But when the poet speaks in the person of another, may we Epic poetry
not say that he assimilates his style to that of the person who, hasan<;ie-
, T . . to mentof
as he informs you, is going to speak ? imitation
Certainly. in the
And this assimiliation of himself to another, either by theTesUs
the use of voice or gesture, is the imitation of the person simple nar-
whose character he assumes ?
Of course.
Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said
to proceed by way of imitation ?
Very true.
Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals
himself, then again the imitation is dropped, and his poetry
becomes simple narration. However, in order that I may S°
The imitative art.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Tragedy
and Come-
dy are
wholly
imitative ;
dithyram-
bic and
some
other kinds
of poetry
are devoid
of imita-
tion. Epic
poetry is a
combina-
tion of the
two.
make my meaning quite clear, and that you may no more say,
' I don't understand/ I will show how the change might
be effected. If Homer had said, ' The priest came, having his
daughter's ransom in his hands, supplicating the Achaeans,
and above all the kings ; ' and then if, instead of speaking in
the person of Chryses, he had continued in his own person,
the words would have been, not imitation, but simple narration.
The passage would have run as follows (I am no poet, and
therefore I drop the metre), ' The priest came and prayed the
gods on behalf of the Greeks that they might capture Troy
and return safely home, but begged that they would give him
back his daughter, and take the ransom which he brought,
and respect the God. Thus he spoke, and the other Greeks
revered the priest and assented. But Agamemnon was
wroth, and bade him depart and not come again, lest the staff
and chaplets of the God should be of no avail to him — the
daughter of Chryses should not be released, he said — she
should grow old with him in Argos. And then he told
him to go away and not to provoke him, if he intended
to get home unscathed. And the old man went away in
fear and silence, and, when he had left the camp, he 394
called upon Apollo by his many names, reminding him
of everything which he had done pleasing to him, whether in
building his temples, or in offering sacrifice, and praying that
his good deeds might be returned to him, and that the
Achaeans might expiate his tears by the arrows of the god/ —
and so on. In this way the whole becomes simple narrative.
I understand, he said.
Or you may suppose the opposite case — that the inter-
mediate passages are omitted, and the dialogue only left.
That also, he said, I understand ; you mean, for example,
as in tragedy.
You have conceived my meaning perfectly ; and if I mistake
not, what you failed to apprehend before is now made clear to
you, that poetry and mythology are, in some cases, wholly
imitative— instances of this are supplied by tragedy and
comedy; there is likewise the opposite style, in which the
poet is the only speaker — of this the dithyramb affords the best
example ; and the combination of both is found in epic, and
in several other styles of poetry. Do I take you with me ?
The feebleness of imitators.
79
Yes, he said ; I see now what you meant.
I will ask you to remember also what I began by saying,
that we had done with the subject and might proceed to
J
the style.
Yes, I remember.
In saying this, I intended to imply that we must come to an
understanding about the mimetic art, — whether the poets,
in narrating their stories, are to be allowed by us to imitate,
and if so, whether in whole or in part, and if the latter, in
what parts ; or should all imitation be prohibited ?
You mean, I suspect, to ask whether tragedy and comedy
shall be admitted into our State ?
Yes, I said ; but there may be more than this in question :
I really do not know as yet, but whither the argument may
blow, thither we go.
And go we will, he said.
Then, Adeimantus, let me ask you whether our guardians
ought to be imitators ; or rather, has not this question been
decided by the rule already laid down that one man can only
do one thing well, and not many; and that if he attempt
many, he will altogether fail of gaining much reputation
in any?
Certainly.
And this is equally true of imitation; no one man can
imitate many things as well as he would imitate a single one ?
He cannot.
395 Then the same person will hardly be able to play a serious
part in life, and at the same time to be an imitator and imitate
many other parts as well; for even when two species of
imitation are nearly allied, the same persons cannot succeed
in both, as, for example, the writers of tragedy and comedy
— did you not just now call them imitations ?
Yes, I did ; and you are right in thinking that the same
persons cannot succeed in both.
Any more than they can be rhapsodists and actors at once ?
True.
Neither are comic and tragic actors the same ; yet all these
things are but imitations.
They are so.
And human nature, Adeimantus, appears to have been
Republic
ni'
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
A hint
(cp. infra,
bk- x>)
Our guard-
imitators,
forone
only do one
thing well;
8o
Kepttblic
III.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
he cannot
even imi-
tate many
things.
Imitations
which are
of the de-
grading
sort.
One man should not play many parts.
coined into yet smaller pieces, and to be as incapable of
imitating many things well, as of performing well the actions
of which the imitations are copies.
Quite true, he replied.
If then we adhere to our original notion and bear in mind
that our guardians, setting aside every other business, are to
dedicate themselves wholly to the maintenance of freedom in
the State, making this their craft, and engaging in no work
which does not bear on this end, they ought not to practise
or imitate anything else ; if they imitate at all, they should
imitate from youth upward only those characters which
are suitable to their profession — the courageous, temperate,
holy, free, and the like; but they should not depict or be
skilful at imitating any kind of illiberality or baseness, lest
from imitation they should come to be what they imitate.
Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early
youth and continuing far into life, at length grow into habits
and become a second nature, affecting body, voice, and
mind?
Yes, certainly, he said.
Then, I said, we will not allow those for whom we profess
a care and of whom we say that they ought to be good men,
to imitate a woman, whether young or old, quarrelling with
her husband, or striving and vaunting against the gods in
conceit of her happiness, or when she is in affliction, or
sorrow, or weeping; and certainly not one who is in sick-
ness, love, or labour.
Very right, he said.
Neither must they represent slaves, male or female, per-
forming the offices of slaves ?
They must not.
And surely not bad men, whether cowards or any others,
who do the reverse of what we have just been prescribing,
who scold or mock or revile one another in drink or out of
drink, or who in any other manner sin against themselves
and their neighbours in word or deed, as the manner of such
is. Neither should they be trained to imitate the action or 396
speech of men or women who are mad or bad ; for madness,
like vice, is to be known but not to be practised or imitated.
Very true, he replied.
The good man will not act a part unworthy of him. 8 1
^Neither may they imitate smiths or other artificers, or Republic
oarsmen, or boatswains, or the like ?
How can they, he said, when they are not allowed to apply
their minds to the callings of any of these ?
Nor may they imitate the neighing of horses, the bellowing
of bulls, the murmur of rivers and roll of the ocean, thunder,
and all that sort of thing ?
Nay, he said, if madness be forbidden, neither may they
copy the behaviour of madmen.
You mean, I said, if I understand you aright, that there is
one sort of narrative style which may be employed by a truly
good man when he has anything to say, and that another sort
will be used by a man of an opposite character and education.
And which are these two sorts ? he asked.
Suppose, I answered, that a just and good man in the imitations
course of a narration conies on some saying or action of J^11^ may
another good man, — I should imagine that he will like to couraged.
personate him, and will not be ashamed of this sort of
imitation : he will be most ready to play the part of the
good man when he is acting firmly and wisely; in a less
degree when he is overtaken by illness or love or drink, or
has met with any other disaster. But when he comes to a
character which is unworthy of him, he will not make a
study of that ; he will disdain such a person, and will assume
his likeness, if at all, for a moment only when he is performing
some good action ; at other times he will be ashamed to play
a part which he has never practised, nor will he like to
fashion and frame himself after the baser models ; he feels
the employment of such an art, unless in jest, to be beneath
him, and his mind revolts at it.
So I should expect, he replied.
Then he will adopt a mode of narration such as we have
illustrated out of Homer, that is to say, his style will be both
imitative and narrative ; but there will be very little of the
former, and a great deal of the latter. Do you agree ?
Certainly, he said ; that is the model which such a speaker
397 must necessarily take.
But there is another sort of character who will narrate imitations
anything, and, the worse he is, the more unscrupulous he will ™hj^h arr^
be ; nothing will be too bad for him : and he will be ready to hibited.
82
Three styles, simple, pantomimic, mixed.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Two kinds
of style —
the one
simple, the
other mul-
tiplex.
There
is^lso
a third
which is a
combina-
tion of the
two.
The simple
style alone
is to be
admitted in
the State ;
the attrac-
tions of
the mixed
style are
acknow-
ledged, but
it appears
to be ex-
cluded.
imitate anything, not as a joke, but in right good earnest, and
before a large company. As I was just now saying, he will
attempt to represent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind
and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the
various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of
instruments : he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or
crow like a cock ; his entire art will consist in imitation of
voice and gesture, and there will be very little narration.
That, he said, will be his mode of speaking.
These, then, are the two kinds of style ?
Yes.
And you would agree with me in saying that one of them is
simple and has but slight changes ; and if the harmony and
rhythm are also chosen for their simplicity, the result is that
the speaker, if he speaks correctly, is always pretty much the
same in style, and he will keep within the limits of a single
harmony (for the changes are not great), and in like manner
he will make use of nearly the same rhythm?
That is quite true, he said.
Whereas the other requires all sorts of harmonies and all
sorts of rhythms, if the music and the style are to correspond,
because the style has all sorts of changes.
That is also perfectly true, he replied.
And do not the two styles, or the mixture of the two, com-
prehend all poetry, and every form of expression in words ?
No one can say anything except in one or other of them or in
both together.
They include all, he said.
And shall we receive into our State all the three styles, or
one only of the two unmixed styles ? or would you include
the mixed ?
I should prefer only to admit the pure imitator of virtue.
Yes, I said, Adeimantus ; but the mixed style is also very
charming : and indeed the pantomimic, which is the opposite
of the one chosen by you, is the most popular style with
children and their attendants, and with the world in general.
I do not deny it.
But I suppose you would argue that such a style is unsuit-
able to our State, in which human nature is not twofold or
manifold, for one man plays one part only ?
The melody and rhythm are to follow the words. 83
Yes ; quite unsuitable. Republic
And this is the reason why in our State, and in our State 7//*
only, we shall find a shoemaker to be a shoemaker and not SOCRATES,
111 t ADEIMANTUS,
a pilot also, and a husbandman to be a husbandman and not a GLAUCON.
dicast also, and a soldier a soldier and not a trader also, and
the same throughout ?
True, he said.
398 And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentle- The panto-
men, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, p111™0^51
J °' is to receive
comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself great
and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as honours,
... , . c . , . , but he is to
a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must be sent out
also inform him that in our State such as he are not of the
permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so c
when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland
of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another
city. For we mean to employ for our souls' health the
rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate
the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models
which we prescribed at first when we began the education
of our soldiers.
We certainly will, he said, if we have the power.
Then now, my friend, I said, that part of music or literary
education which relates to the story or myth may be con-
sidered to be finished ; for the matter and manner have both
been discussed.
I think so too, he said.
Next in order will follow melody and song.
That is obvious.
Every one can see already what we ought to say about
them, if we are to be consistent with ourselves.
I fear, said Glaucon, laughing, that the word 'every one'
hardly includes me, for I cannot at the moment say what
they should be ; though I may guess.
At any rate you can tell that a song or ode has three
parts — the words, the melody, and the rhythm ; that degree
of knowledge I may presuppose ?
Yes, he said ; so much as that you may.
And as for the words, there will surely be no difference
between words which are and which are not set to music ;
G 2
The harmonies or modes and their effects.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Melody
and
rhythm.
The re-
laxed me-
lodies or
harmonies
are the
Ionian and
the Lydian.
These are
to be
banished.
both will conform to the same laws, and these have been
already determined by us ?
Yes.
And the melody and rhythm will depend upon the words ?
Certainly.
We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter,
that we had no need of lamentation and strains of sorrow ?
True.
And which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow ? You
are musical, and can tell me.
The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor
Lydian, and the full-toned or bass Lydian, and such like.
These then, I said, must be banished; even to women
who have a character to maintain they are of no use, and
much less to men.
Certainly.
In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence
are utterly unbecoming the character of our guardians.
Utterly unbecoming.
And which are the soft or drinking harmonies ?
The Ionian, he replied, and the Lydian ; they are termed 399
'relaxed.1
Well, and are these of any military use ?
Quite the reverse, he replied ; and if so the Dorian and the
Phrygian are the only ones which you have left.
I answered : Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want
to have one warlike, to sound the note or accent which
a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stern resolve,
or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds
or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every
such crisis meets the blows of fortune with firm step and
a determination to endure ; and another to be used by him
in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no
pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by
prayer, or man by instruction and admonition, or on the other
hand, when he is expressing his willingness to yield to
persuasion or entreaty or admonition, and which represents
him when by prudent conduct he has attained his end, not
carried away by his success, but acting moderately and wisely
under the circumstances, and acquiescing in the event. These
Musical instruments ; rhythms. 85
two harmonies I ask you to leave ; the strain of necessity Republic
and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and IIL
the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage, and the SOCRATES,
strain of temperance ; these, I say, leave.
And these, he replied, are the Dorian and Phrygian har-
monies of which I was just now speaking.
Then, I said, if these and these only are to be used in our The Do-
songs and melodies, we shall not want multiplicity of notes ^ a?d
. . * Phrygian
or a panharmonic scale ? are to be
I Suppose not. retained.
Then we shall not maintain the artificers of lyres with
three corners and complex scales, or the makers of any other
many-stringed curiously-harmonised instruments ?
Certainly not.
But what do you say to flute-makers and flute-players? Musical
Would you admit them into our State when you reflect that JU^T_
in this composite use of harmony the flute is worse than which are
all the stringed instruments put together; even the pan- fobe re-
harmonic music is only an imitation of the flute ? which *"
Clearly not. allowed ?
There remain then only the lyre and the harp for use in
the city, and the shepherds may have a pipe in the country.
That is surely the conclusion to be drawn from the
argument.
The preferring of Apollo and his instruments to Marsyas
and his instruments is not at all strange, I said.
Not at all, he replied.
And so, by the dog of Egypt, we have been unconsciously
purging the State, which not long ago we termed luxurious.
And we have done wisely, he replied.
Then let us now finish the purgation, I said. Next in order
to harmonies, rhythms will naturally follow, and they should
be subject to the same rules, for we ought not to seek out
complex systems of metre, or metres of every kind, but rather
to discover what rhythms are the expressions of a courageous
400 and harmonious life ; and when we have found them, we
shall adapt the foot and the melody to words having a like
spirit, not the words to the foot and melody. To say what
these rhythms are will be your duty — you must teach me
them, as you have already taught me the harmonies.
86
The question of rhythms referred to Damon.
Republic
IIL
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Three
kinds of
rhythm as
there are
four notes
of the te-
trachord.
Rhythm
and har-
mony
follow
style, and
style is the
expression
of the soul.
But, indeed, he replied, I cannot tell you. I only know
that there are some three principles of rhythm out of which
metrical systems are framed, just as in sounds there are four
notes * out of which all the harmonies are composed ; that is
an observation which I have made. But of what sort of lives
they are severally the imitations I am unable to say.
Then, I said, we must take Damon into our counsels ; and
he will tell us what rhythms are expressive of meanness,
or insolence, or fury, or other unworthiness, and what are to
be reserved for the expression of opposite feelings. And
I think that I have an indistinct recollection of his men-
tioning a complex Cretic rhythm; also a dactylic or heroic,
and he arranged them in some manner which I do not quite
understand, making the rhythms equal in the rise and fall of
the foot, long and short alternating; and, unless I am mistaken,
he spoke of an iambic as well as of a trochaic rhythm, and
assigned to them short and long quantities 2. Also in some
cases he appeared to praise or censure the movement of the
foot quite as much as the rhythm ; or perhaps a combination
of the two ; for I am not certain what he meant. These
matters, however, as I was saying, had better be referred
to Damon himself, for the analysis of the subject would
be difficult, you know ?
Rather so, I should say.
But there is no difficulty in seeing that grace or the
absence of grace is an effect of good or bad rhythm.
None at all.
And also that good and bad rhythm naturally assimilate to
a good and bad style ; and that harmony and discord in like
manner follow style; for our principle is that rhythm and
harmony are regulated by the words, and not the words
by them.
Just so, he said, they should follow the words.
And will not the words and the character of the style
depend on the temper of the soul ?
1 i. e. the fonr notes of the tetrachord.
a Socrates expresses himself carelessly in accordance with his assumed igno-
rance of the details of the subject. In the first part of the sentence he appears
to be speaking of paeonic rhythms which are in the ratio of f ; in the second part,
of dactylic and anapaestic rhythms, which are in the ratio of \ ; in the last
clause, of iambic and trochaic rhythms, which are in the ratio of \ or f .
Other artists, and not only poets, to be under the State. 8 7
Yes. Republic
And everything else on the style ? IIL
Yes. SOCRATES,
Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good
, . ,. . , J . - Simplicity
rhythm depend on simplicity, — 1 mean the true simplicity of the great
a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that first prin-
other simplicity which is only an euphemism for folly ?
Very true, he replied.
And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not
make these graces and harmonies their perpetual aim ?
They must.
401 And surely the art of the painter and every other creative andaprm-
and constructive art are full of them, — weaving, embroidery, ^I^defnch
architecture, and every kind of manufacture; also nature, spread in
animal and vegetable, — in all of them there is grace or the nature and
absence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inhar-
monious motion are nearly allied to ill words and ill nature,
as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and
virtue and bear their likeness.
That is quite true, he said.
But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the Our titi-
poets only to be required by us to express the image of the Z6o^™ustto
good in their works, on pain, if they do anything else, of manhood
expulsion from our State ? Or is the same control to be ex- amidst
tended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from Sions of
exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and grace and
meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the Oniy ^ail
other creative arts ; and is he who cannot conform to this rule ugliness
of ours to be prevented from practising his art in our State, J^™
lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him? We excluded.
would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral
deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and
feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day,
little by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of
corruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be those
who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and
graceful ; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid
fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything ;
and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye
and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and
Music the most potent instrument of education.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The power
of impart-
ing grace is
by har-
mony.
The true
musician
must know
the essen-
tial forms
of virtue
and vice.
insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and
sympathy with the beauty of reason.
There can be no nobler training than that, he replied.
And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more
potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and har-
mony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on
which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the
soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who
is ill-educated ungraceful ; and also because he who has
received this true education of the inner being will most
shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature,
and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and 402
receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good,
he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his
youth, even before he is able to know the reason why ; and
when reason comes he will recognise and salute the friend
with whom his education has made him long familiar.
Yes, he said, I quite agree with you in thinking that our
youth should be trained in music and on the grounds which
you mention.
Just as in learning to read, I said, we were satisfied when
we knew the letters of the alphabet, which are very few, in
all their recurring sizes and combinations ; not slighting
them as unimportant whether they occupy a space large or
small, but everywhere eager to make them out; and not
thinking ourselves perfect in the art of reading until we
recognise them wherever they are found l :
True —
Or, as we recognise the reflection of letters in the water,
or in a mirror, only when we know the letters themselves ;
the same art and study giving us the knowledge of both :
Exactly —
Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor our guardians,
whom we have to educate, can ever become musical until we
and they know the essential forms of temperance, courage,
liberality, magnificence, and their kindred, as well as the
contrary forms, in all their combinations, and can recognise
them and their images wherever they are found, not slighting
1 Cp. supra, II. 368 D.
' Mem pulchra in corpore pulchro! 89
them either in small things or great, but believing them all Republic
to be within the sphere of one art and study.
Most assuredly.
And when a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful _,
The har-
form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the monyof
fairest of sights to him who has an eye to see it ? soul and
J body the
The fairest indeed. fairest of
And the fairest is also the loveliest ? sights.
That may be assumed.
And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most
in love with the loveliest ; but he will not love him who is of
an inharmonious soul ?
That is true, he replied, if the deficiency be in his soul ; The true
but if there be any merely bodily defect in another he will J^^d
be patient of it, and will love all the same. defects of
I perceive, I said, that you have or have had experiences the P61"5011-
of this sort, and I agree. But let me ask you another ques-
tion : Has excess of pleasure any affinity to temperance ?
How can that be ? he replied ; pleasure deprives a man of
the use of his faculties quite as much as pain.
Or any affinity to virtue in general ?
403 None whatever.
Any affinity to wantonness and intemperance ?
Yes, the greatest.
And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of
sensual love ?
No, nor a madder.
Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order — tern- True love is
perate and harmonious ?
Quite true, he said.
Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to
approach true love ?
Certainly not.
Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed True love is
to come near the lover and his beloved ; neither of them can ^suaiit1
have any part in it if their love is of the right sort ? and coarse-
No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them. ness>
Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you
would make a law to the effect that a friend should use no
other familiarity to his love than a father would use to his
QO
The good soul improves the body, not the body the soul.
Republic
'
Gymnastic.
The body
trustedto
the mind,
The usual
training of
sleepy.
son, and then only for a noble purpose, and he must first
have the other's consent ; and this rule is to limit him in
a11 his intercourse, and he is never to be seen going further,
or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of coarseness and
bad taste.
I quite agree, he said.
Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending ; for what
should be the end of music if not the love of beauty ?
I agree, he said.
After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next
to be trained.
Certainly.
Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years ; the
training in it should be careful and should continue through
life. Now my belief is, — and this is a matter upon which
I should like to have your opinion in confirmation of my own,
but my own belief is, — not that the good body by any bodily
excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the
good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as
far as this may be possible. What do you say ?
Yes, I agree.
Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be
right; in handing over the more particular care of the body ;
and in order to avoid prolixity we will now only give the
general outlines of the subject.
Very good.
That they must abstain from intoxication has been already
remarked by us ; for of all persons a guardian should be the
last to get drunk and not know where in the world he is.
Yes, he said ; that a guardian should require another
guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.
But next, what shall we say of their food ; for the men are
in training for the great contest of all — are they not ?
Yes, he said.
And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be 404
suited to them ?
Why not ?
I am afraid, I said, that a habit of body such as they have
is but a sleePy sort of thin& and rather perilous to health.
Do you not observe that these athletes sleep away their
The simple gymnastic twin sister of the simple music. 9 1
lives, and are liable to most dangerous illnesses if they Republic
depart, in ever so slight a degree, from their customary 7//<
regimen ? SOCRATES,
° GLAUCON.
Yes, I do.
Then, I said, a finer sort of training will be required for
our warrior athletes, who are to be like wakeful dogs, and
to see and hear with the utmost keenness ; amid the many
changes of water and also of food, of summer heat and
winter cold, which they will have to endure when on a
campaign, they must not be liable to break down in health.
That is my view.
The really excellent gymnastic is twin sister of that simple
music which we were just now describing.
How so ?
Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastic which, like our Military
music, is simple and good ; and especially the military gym- &ymnastlc-
nastic.
What do you mean ?
My meaning may be learned from Homer ; he, you know,
feeds his heroes at their feasts, when they are campaigning,
on soldiers' fare; they have no fish, although they are on
the shores of the Hellespont, and they are not allowed
boiled meats but only roast, which is the food most con-
venient for soldiers, requiring only that they should light
a fire, and not involving the trouble of carrying about pots
and pans.
True.
And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces
are nowhere mentioned in Homer. In proscribing them,
however, he is not singular; all professional athletes are
well aware that a man who is to be in good condition should
take nothing of the kind.
Yes, he said ; and knowing this, they are quite right in not
taking them.
Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and Syracusan
the refinements of Sicilian cookery ? SrinthSf
I think not. courtezans
Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to
have a Corinthian girl as his fair friend ?
Certainly not.
The vanity of doctors and lawyers.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The luxuri-
ous style of
living may
be justly
compared
to the pan-
harmonic
strain of
music.
Every man
should be
his own
doctor and
lawyer.
Bad as it is
to go to
law, it is
still worse
to be a
lover of
litigation.
Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are
thought, of Athenian confectionary?
Certainly not.
All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by
us to melody and song composed in the panharmonic style,
and in all the rhythms.
Exactly.
There complexity engendered licence, and here disease;
whereas simplicity in music was the parent of temperance in
the soul ; and simplicity in gymnastic of health in the body.
Most true, he said.
But when intemperance and diseases multiply in a State, 405
halls of justice and medicine are always being opened ; and
the arts of the doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs,
finding how keen is the interest which not only the slaves
but the freemen of a city take about them.
Of course.
And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and dis-
graceful state of education than this, that not only artisans
and the meaner sort of people need the skill of first-rate phy-
sicians and judges, but also those who would profess to have
had a liberal education ? Is it not disgraceful, and a great
sign of the want of good-breeding, that a man should have to
go abroad for his law and physic because he has none of his
own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into the
hands of other men whom he makes lords and judges over
him?
Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful.
Would you say ' most,' I replied, when you consider that
there is a further stage of the evil in which a man is not only
a life-long litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either
as plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste
to pride himself on his litigiousness ; he imagines that he is
a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and
wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and
getting out of the way of justice : and all for what ? — in
order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not
knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without
a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is
not that still more disgraceful ?
Asclepius and Her odious. 93
Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful. Republic
Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when /7/'
a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but
just because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have
been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, require the
as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious helP°f
f A i r» i c I- i medicine.
sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as
flatulence and catarrh ; is not this, too, a disgrace ?
Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and new-
fangled names to diseases.
Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such in the time
diseases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the pj^^of
circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been Homer the
wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well J^icine°f
406 besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese, which are was very
certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who were simPle-
at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel who gives him
the drink, or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his case.
Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be
given to a person in his condition.
Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that The nurs-
in former days, as is commonly said, before the time of ^JiLfan
Herodicus, the guild of Asclepius did not practise our pre- with He-
sent system of medicine, which may be said to educate rodicus-
diseases. But Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself of a
sickly constitution, by a combination of training and doctor-
ing found out a way of torturing first and chiefly himself,
and secondly the rest of the world.
How was that ? he said.
By the invention of lingering death ; for he had a mortal
disease which he perpetually tended, and as recovery was out
of the question, he passed his entire life as a valetudinarian ;
he could do nothing but attend upon himself, and he was
in constant torment whenever he departed in anything from
his usual regimen, and so dying hard, by the help of science
he struggled on to old age.
A rare reward of his skill !
Yes, I said ; a reward which a man might fairly expect
who never understood that, if Asclepius did not instruct his
descendants in valetudinarian arts, the omission arose, not
94
The saying of Phocy tides.
Republic
IIL
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The work-
ing-man
has no time
for tedious
remedies.
The slow
cure
equally an
impedi-
ment to the
mechanical
arts, to the
practice of
virtue,
from ignorance or inexperience of such a branch of medicine,
but because he knew that in all well-ordered states every
individual has an occupation to which he must attend, and
has therefore no leisure to spend in continually being ill.
This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously
enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer
sort.
How do you mean ? he said.
I mean this : When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician
for a rough and ready cure ; an emetic or a purge or a cautery
or the knife, — these are his remedies. And if some one pre-
scribes for him a course of dietetics, and tells him that he
must swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort of thing,
he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and that he sees
no good in a life which is spent in nursing his disease to the
neglect of his customary employment ; and therefore bidding
good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary
habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business,
or, if his constitution fails, he dies and has no more trouble.
Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to
use the art of medicine thus far only.
Has he not, I said, an occupation ; and what profit would 407
there be in his life if he were deprived of his occupation ?
Quite true, he said.
But with the rich man this is otherwise ; of him we do not
say that he has any specially appointed work which he must
perform, if he would live.
He is generally supposed to have nothing to do.
Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as
soon as a man has a livelihood he should practise virtue ?
Nay, he said, I think that he had better begin somewhat
sooner.
Let us not have a dispute with him about this, I said ; but
rather ask ourselves : Is the practice of virtue obligatory on
the rich man, or can he live without it ? And if obligatory
on him, then let us raise a further question, whether this
dieting of disorders, which is an impediment to the ap-
plication of the mind in carpentering and the mechanical
arts, does not equally stand in the way of the sentiment
of Phocylides ?
Asclepius a statesman. 95
Of that, he replied, there can be no doubt ; such excessive Republic
care of the body, when carried beyond the rules of gymnastic, ///>
is most inimical to the practice of virtue. SOCRATES,
1 Yes, indeed, I replied, and equally incompatible with the and an
management of a house, an army, or an office of state ; and, kind of
what is most important of all, irreconcileable with any kind Stud7 or
of study or thought or self-reflection — there is a constant
suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to
philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue
in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is
always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant
anxiety about the state of his body.
Yes, likely enough.
And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to Asclepius
have exhibited the power of his art only to persons who, ^fdis-0t
being generally of healthy constitution and habits of life, had eased con-
a definite ailment ; such as these he cured by purges and j^^g s
operations, and bade them live as usual, herein consulting they were
the interests of the State; but bodies which disease had
penetrated through and through he would not have at-
tempted to cure by gradual processes of evacuation and in-
fusion : he did not want to lengthen out good-for-nothing
lives, or to have weak fathers begetting weaker sons ; — if a
man was not able to live in the ordinary way he had no
business to cure him ; for such a cure would have been of
no use either to himself, or to the State.
Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman.
Clearly ; and his character is further illustrated by his sons. The case of
408 Note that they were heroes in the days of old and practised the Jfho^T
medicines of which I am speaking at the siege of Troy : You attended
will remember how, when Pandarus wounded Menelaus, they b^ *he sons
•* of Ascle-
' Sucked the blood out of the wound, and sprinkled soothing P-115'
remedies V
but they never prescribed what the patient was afterwards to
eat or drink in the case of Menelaus, any more than in the
case of Eurypylus ; the remedies, as they conceived, were
enough to heal any man who before he was wounded was
1 Making the answer of Socrates begin at ical ykp irpbs K.T.\.
2 Iliad iv. 218.
96
Distinction between the physician and the judge.
Republic
///-
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The offence
Thephysi-
rienceof
his o^n1
person ;
healthy and regular in his habits ; and even though he did
happen to drink a posset of Pramnian wine, he might get
weu ajj tne same> But they would have nothing to do with
unhealthy and intemperate subjects, whose lives were of no
use either to themselves or others ; the art of medicine was
not designed for their good, and though they were as rich
as Midas, the sons of Asclepius would have declined to
attend them.
They were very acute persons, those sons of Asclepius.
Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and
Pindar disobeying our behests, although they acknowledge
that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, say also that he was
bribed into healing a rich man who was at the point of death,
and for this reason he was struck by lightning. But we,
in accordance with the principle already affirmed by us, will
not believe them when they tell us both ; — if he was the son
of a god, we maintain that he was not avaricious ; or, if he
was avaricious, he was not the son of a god.
All that, Socrates, is excellent; but I should like to put
a question to you : Ought there not to be good physicians in
a State, and are not the best those who have treated the
greatest number of constitutions good and bad ? and are not
the best judges in like manner those who are acquainted
with all sorts of moral natures ?
Yes, I said, I too would have good judges and good
physicians. But do you know whom I think good?
Will you tell me ?
I will, if I can. Let me however note that in the same
question you join two things which are not the same.
How so ? he asked.
Why, I said, you join physicians and judges. Now the
most ^ilful physicians are those who, from their youth
upwards, have combined with the knowledge of their art
greatest experience of disease ; they had better not be
robust in health, and should have had all manner of diseases
in their own persons. For the body, as I conceive, is not
the instrument with which they cure the body ; in that case
we could not allow them ever to be or to have been sickly ;
but they cure the body with the mind, and the mind which
has become and is sick can cure nothing.
The simple medicine and simple law. 97
That is very true, he said. Republic
409 But with the judge it is otherwise ; since he governs mind IH~
by mind ; he ought not therefore to have been trained among
vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth ^
upwards, and to have gone through the whole calendar of other hand,
crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes theJudse
r ' . . . . , • ... j. f , . should not
of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own iearn to
self-consciousness ; the honourable mind which is to form know evil
a healthy judgment should have had no experience or con- practiced1
tamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason it, but by
why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are ^"ion of""
easily practised upon by the dishonest, because they have no evil in
examples of what evil is in their own souls.
Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived.
Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he
should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but
from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others :
knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.
Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge.
Yes, I replied, and he will be a good man (which is my Such a
answer to your question); for he is good who has a good J^mmaii6
soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of which we nature far
spoke, — he who has committed many crimes, and fancies tetter and
J truer than
himself to be a master in wickedness, when he is amongst that of the
his fellows, is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, ^P* in
because he judges of them by himself: but when he gets into
the company of men of virtue, who have the experience of
age, he appears to be a fool again, owing to his unseasonable
suspicions; he cannot recognise an honest man, because he
has no pattern of honesty in himself; at the same time, as
the bad are more numerous than the good, and he meets
with them oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others
thought to be, rather wise than foolish.
Most true, he said.
Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not
this man, but the other ; for vice cannot know virtue too, but
a virtuous nature, educated by time, will acquire a knowledge
both of virtue and vice : the virtuous, and not the vicious
man has wisdom — in my opinion.
And in mine also.
H
98
The true aim of music and gymnastic.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Music and
gymnastic
are equally
designed
for the im-
provement
of the
mind.
The mere
athle'te
must be
softened,
and the
philosophic
nature pre-
vented
from be-
coming
too soft.
This is the sort of medicine, and this is the sort of law,
which you will sanction in your state. They will minister to
better natures, giving health both of soul and of body ; but
those who are diseased in their bodies they will leave to die,
and the corrupt and incurable souls they will put an end to
themselves.
That is clearly the best thing both for the patients and for
the State.
And thus our youth, having been educated only in that
simple music which, as we said, inspires temperance, will be
reluctant to go to law.
Clearly.
And the musician, who, keeping to the same track, is con-
tent to practise the simple gymnastic, will have nothing to do
with medicine unless in some extreme case.
That I quite believe.
The very exercises and toils which he undergoes are
intended to stimulate the spirited element of his nature,
and not to increase his strength ; he will not, like common
athletes, use exercise and regimen to develope his muscles.
Very right, he said.
Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastic really
designed, as is often supposed, the one for the training of
the soul, the other for the training of the body.
What then is the real object of them?
I believe, I said, that the teachers of both have in view
chiefly the improvement of the soul.
How can that be? he asked.
Did you never observe, I said, the effect on the mind itself
of exclusive devotion to gymnastic, or the opposite effect of
an exclusive devotion to music ?
In what way shown ? he said.
The one producing a temper of hardness ancl ferocity, the
other of softness and effeminacy, I replied.
Yes, he said, I am quite aware that the mere athlete
becomes too much of a savage, and that the mere musician is
melted and softened beyond what is good for him.
Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit,
which, if rightly educated, would give courage, but, if too
much intensified, is liable to become hard and brutal.
The excess of -music and gymnastic. 99
That I quite think. . Republic
On the other hand the philosopher will have the quality of In-
gentleness. And this also, when too much indulged, will
turn to softness, but, if educated rightly, will be gentle and
moderate.
True.
And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these
qualities ?
Assuredly.
And both should be in harmony ?
Beyond question.
411 And the harmonious soul is both temperate and coura-
geous ?
Yes.
And the inharmonious is cowardly and boorish ?
Very true.
And, when a man allows music to play upon him and Music, if
to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those ^"renders
sweet and soft and melancholy airs of which we were just now the weaker
speaking, and his whole life is passed in warbling and the nature ef[e'
, | ,. c . . mmate, the
delights of song ; in the first stage of the process the passion stronger
or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made irritable,
useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on
the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he
begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit
and cut out the sinews of his soul ; and he becomes a feeble
warrior.
Very true.
If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him the change
is speedily accomplished, but if he have a good deal, then the
power of music weakening the spirit renders him excitable ;
— on the least provocation he flames up at once, and is
speedily extinguished; instead of having spirit he grows
irritable and passionate and is quite impracticable.
Exactly.
And so in gymnastics, if a man takes violent exercise and And in H1f
, manner the
is a great feeder, and the reverse of a great student of music well-fed
and philosophy, at first the high condition of his body fills athlete. if
him with pride and spirit, and he becomes twice the man that education?
he was.
H 2
ioo The two corresponding elements in human nature.
Republic
IIL
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
degener-
ates into a
wild beast.
Music to
be mingled
with gym-
nastic, and
both at-
tempered
to the indi-
vidual soul.
Enough of
principles
of educa-
tion : who
are to be
our rulers ?
Certainly.
And what happens ? if he do nothing else, and holds no
converse with the Muses, does not even that intelligence
which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of
learning or enquiry or thought or culture, grow feeble and
dull and blind, his mind never waking up or receiving
nourishment, and his senses not being purged of their mists ?
True, he said.
And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized,
never using the weapon of persuasion, — he is like a wild
beast, all violence and fierceness, and knows no other way of
dealing; and he lives in all ignorance and evil conditions,
and has no sense of propriety and grace.
That is quite true, he said.
And as there are two principles of human nature, one the
spirited and the other the philosophical, some God, as I
should say, has given mankind two arts answering to them
(and only indirectly to the soul and body), in order that these
two principles (like the strings of an instrument) may be 412
relaxed or drawn tighter until they are duly harmonized.
That appears to be the intention.
And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest
proportions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be
rightly called the true musician and harmonist in a far higher
sense than the tuner of the strings.
You are quite right, Socrates.
And such a presiding genius will be always required in our
State if the government is to last.
Yes, he will be absolutely necessary.
Such, then, are our principles of nurture and education :
Where would be the use of going into further details about
the dances of our citizens, or about their hunting and coursing,
their gymnastic and equestrian contests ? For these all follow
the general principle, and having found that, we shall have
no difficulty in discovering them.
I dare say that there will be no difficulty.
Very good, I said ; then what is the next question ? Must
we not ask who are to be rulers and who subjects ?
Certainly.
There can be no doubt that the elder must rule the younger.
Selection and probation of the guardians. 101
Clearly. Republic
And that the best of these must rule. IIL
That is also clear.
Now. are not the best husbandmen those who are most
The elder
devoted to husbandry ? must rule
Yes. anc* the
And as we are to have the best of guardians for our city,
must they not be those who have most the character of
guardians ?
Yes.
And to this end they ought to be wise and efficient, and to
have a special care of the State ?
True.
And a man will be most likely to care about that which he Those are
loves? ££f
To be Sure. rulers who
And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as have been
J f tested mall
having the same interests with himself, and that of which the the stages
good or evil fortune is supposed by him at any time most of their life;
to affect his own ?
Very true, he replied.
Then there must be a selection. Let us note among the
guardians those who in their whole life show the greatest
eagerness to do what is for the good of their country, and the
greatest repugnance to do what is against her interests.
Those are the right men.
And they will have to be watched at every age, in order
that we may see whether they preserve their resolution, and
never, under the influence either of force or enchantment,
forget or cast off their sense of duty to the State.
How cast off? he said.
I will explain to you, I replied. A resolution may go out
of a man's mind either with his will or against his will ; with
413 his will when he gets rid of a falsehood and learns better,
against his will whenever he is deprived of a truth.
I understand, he said, the willing loss of a resolution ; the
meaning of the unwilling I have yet to learn.
Why, I said, do you not see that men are unwillingly
deprived of good, and willingly of evil ? Is not to have lost
the truth an evil, and to possess the truth a good ? and you
IO2
The guardians of the State
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
and who
are un-
changed by
the influ-
ence either
of pleasure,
or of fear,
or of en-
chant-
ments.
would agree that to conceive things as they are is to possess
the truth ?
Yes, he replied ; I agree with you in thinking that man-
kind are deprived of truth against their will.
And is not this involuntary deprivation caused either by
theft, or force, or enchantment ?
Still, he replied, I do not understand you.
I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the trage-
dians. I only mean that some men are changed by persua-
sion and that others forget ; argument steals away the hearts
of one class, and time of the other ; and this I call theft.
Now you understand me ?
Yes.
Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence
of some pain or grief compels to change their opinion.
I understand, he said, and you are quite right.
And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are
those who change their minds either under the softer in-
fluence of pleasure, or the sterner influence of fear ?
Yes, he said ; everything that deceives may be said to en-
chant.
Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must enquire who
are the best guardians of their own conviction that what they
think the interest of the State is to be the rule of their lives.
We must watch them from their youth upwards, and make
them perform actions in which they are most likely to forget
or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is not deceived
is to be selected, and he who fails in the trial is to be re-
jected. That will be the way ?
Yes.
And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts pre-
scribed for them, in which they will be made to give further
proof of the same qualities.
. Very right, he replied.
And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments —
that is the third sort of test — and see what will be their
behaviour : like those who take colts amid noise and tumult
to see if they are of a timid nature, so must we take our
youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass them into
pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is
must be guardians of themselves. 103
proved in the furnace, that we may discover whether they Republic
are armed against all enchantments, and of a noble bearing H '
always, good guardians of themselves and of the music which SOCRATES,
J ' & GLAUCON.
they have learned, and retaining under all circumstances a
rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will be most
serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he if they
who at every age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has ^J1^6
come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed are to be
414 a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall be honoured in j^°^d
life and death, and shall receive sepulture and other me- after death.
mortals of honour, the greatest that we have to give. But
him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined to think that
this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians
should be chosen and appointed. I speak generally, and not
with any pretension to exactness.
And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.
And perhaps the word ' guardian ' in the fullest sense The title of
ought to be applied to this higher class only who preserve us f^1^5
against foreign enemies and maintain peace among our served for
citizens at home, that the one may not have the will, or the *® el^s>
others the power, to harm us. The young men whom we men to be
before called guardians may be more properly designated called aux-
auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the rulers.
I agree with you, he said.
How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods
of which we lately spoke — just one royal lie which may
deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the
rest of the city ?
What sort of lie ? he said.
Nothing new, I replied ; only an old Phoenician * tale of The Phoe-
what has often occurred before now in other places, (as the
poets say, and have made the world believe,) though not in
our time, and I do not know whether such an event could
ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if
it did.
How your words seem to hesitate on your lips !
You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you
have heard.
Speak, he said, and fear not.
1 Cp. Laws, 663 E.
104
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The citizens
to be told
that they
are really
auto-
chthonous,
sent up out
of the earth,
and com-
posed of
metals of
various
quality.
The noble
quality to
rise in the
State, the
ignoble to
descend.
The parable of the metals.
Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how
to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the auda-
cious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first
to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people.
They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the
education and training which they received from us, an ap-
pearance only ; in reality during all that time they were being
formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they them-
selves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured ;
when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent
them up ; and so, their country being their mother and also
their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to
defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard
as children of the earth and their own brothers.
You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie
which you were going to tell.
True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only 41 5
told you half. Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you
are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some
of you have the power of command, and in the composition of
these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the
greatest honour ; others he has made of silver, to be auxil-
iaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and crafts-
men he has composed of brass and iron ; and the species
will generally be preserved in the children. But as all are
of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes
have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God
proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above all else,
that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard,
or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the
purity of the race. They should observe what elements
mingle in their offspring ; for if the son of a golden or silver
parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders
a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the ruler must not be
pitiful towards the child because he has to descend in the
scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may
be sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver
in them are raised to honour, and become guardians or
auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass
or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the
The auxiliaries imist be watch-dogs, not wolves. 105
tale ; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe Republic
• • . f^ J. J. J. •
in it?
Not in the present generation, he replied ; there is no way
of accomplishing this ; but their sons may be made to believe Ig such a
in the tale, and their sons* sons, and posterity after them. fiction cre-
I see the difficulty, I replied ; yet the fostering of such ^te^
a belief will make them care more for the city and for one future ge-
another. Enough, however, of the fiction, which may now aeration ;
not m the
fly abroad upon the wings of rumour, while we arm our present.
earth-born heroes, and lead them forth under the command
of their rulers. Let them look round and select a spot Theseiec-
whence they can best suppress insurrection, if any prove ^e for the
refractory within, and also defend themselves against enemies, warriors'
who like wolves may come down on the fold from without ; camp'
there let them encamp, and when they have encamped, let
them sacrifice to the proper Gods and prepare their dwellings.
Just so, he said.
And their dwellings must be such as will shield them
against the cold of winter and the heat of summer.
I suppose that you mean houses, he replied.
Yes, I said ; but they must be the houses of soldiers, and
not of shop-keepers.
What is the difference ? he said.
416 That I will endeavour to explain, I replied. To keep The war-
watch-dogs, who, from want of discipline or hunger, or some jj^™^1
evil habit or other, would turn upon the sheep and worry izedbyedu-
them, and behave not like dogs but wolves, would be a foul cation-
and monstrous thing in a shepherd ?
Truly monstrous, he said.
And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries,
being stronger than our citizens, may not grow to be too
much for them and become savage tyrants instead of friends
and allies ?
Yes, great care should be taken.
And would not a really good education furnish the best
safeguard ?
But they are well-educated already, he replied.
I cannot be so confident, my dear Glaucon, I said ; I am
much more certain that they ought to be, and that true
education, whatever that may be, will have the greatest
io6
The auxiliaries must be soldiers, not householders.
Republic
III.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Their way
of life will
be that of
a camp.
They must
have no
homes or
property of
their own.
tendency to civilize and Humanize them in their relations
to one another, and to those who are under their protection.
Very true, he replied.
And not only their education, but their habitations, and all
that belongs to them, should be such as will neither impair
their virtue as guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the
other citizens. Any man of sense must acknowledge that.
He must.
Then now let us consider what will be their way of life,
if they are to realize our idea of them. In the first place,
none of them should have any property of his own beyond
what is absolutely necessary; neither should they have
a private house or store closed against any one who has a
mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as
are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance
and courage ; they should agree to receive from the citizens
a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year
and no more ; and they will go to mess and live together like
soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them
that they have from God ; the diviner metal is within them,
and they have therefore no need of the dross which is
current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine
by any such earthly admixture ; for that commoner metal has 4J7
been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is
undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch
or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with
them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will
be their salvation, and they will be the saviours of the State.
But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys
of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen
instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of
the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and
being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much
greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the
hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State,
will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that
thus shall our State be ordered, and that these shall be
the regulations appointed by us for our guardians concerning
their houses and all other matters ?
Yes, said Glaucon.
BOOK IV.
steph. HERE Adeimantus interposed a question : How would you Republic
419 answer, Socrates, said he, if a person were to say that you
are making1 these people miserable, and that they are the §0*™*™*
cause of their owit unhappiness ; the city in fact belongs to An objec.
them, but they are none the better for it ; whereas other men tion that
acquire lands, and build large and handsome houses, and haTmade
have everything handsome about them, offering sacrifices his citizens
to the gods on their own account, and practising hospitality ; ^serabie •
moreover, as you were saying just now, they have gold
and silver, and all that is usual among the favourites of
fortune ; but our poor citizens are no better than mercenaries
who are quartered in the city and are always mounting
guard ?
420 Yes, I said ; and you may add that they are only fed, and worst
and not paid in addition to their food, like other men ; and gocrates^
therefore they cannot, if they would, take a journey of they have
pleasure ; they have no money to spend on a mistress or any no money-
other luxurious fancy, which, as the world goes, is thought to
be happiness ; and many other accusations of the same
nature might be added.
But, said he, let us suppose all this to be included in the
charge.
You mean to ask, I said, what will be our answer ?
Yes.
If we proceed along the old path, my belief, I said, is Yet very
that we shall find the answer. And our answer will be that, llkely th?y
' may be the
even as they are, our guardians may very likely be the happiest of
happiest of men ; but that our aim in founding the State was mankind-
not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the
greatest happiness of the whole ; we thought that in a State
1 Or, * that for their own good you are making these people miserable.'
io8
to
Republic
IV.
ADEIMANTUS,
SOCRATES.
The State,
like a
statue,
must be
judged of
as a whole.
The guard-
ians must
be guard-
ians, not
boon com-
panions.
The State must be regarded as a whole.
which is ordered with a view to the good of the whole we
should be most likely to find justice, and in the ill-ordered
State injustice : and, having found them, we might then decide
which of the two is the happier. At present, I take it, we are
fashioning the happy State, not piecemeal, or with a view of
making a few happy citizens, but as a whole ; and by-and-by
we will proceed to view the opposite kind of State. Suppose
that we were painting a statue, and some one came up to us
and said, Why do you not put the most beautiful colours on
the most beautiful parts of the body — the eyes ought to be
purple, but you have made them black — to him we might
fairly answer, Sir, you would not surely have us beautify the
eyes to such a degree that they are no longer eyes ; consider
rather whether, by giving this and the other features their
due proportion, we make the whole beautiful. And so I
say to you, do not compel us to assign to the guardians
a sort of happiness which will make them anything but
guardians ; for we too can clothe our husbandmen in royal
apparel, and set crowns of gold on their heads, and bid them
till the ground as much as they like, and no more. Our
potters also might be allowed to repose on couches, and
feast by the fireside, passing round the winecup, while their
wheel is conveniently at hand, and working at pottery only
as much as they like ; in this way we might make every class
happy — and then, as you imagine, the whole State would
be happy. But do not put this idea into our heads ; for,
if we listen to you, the husbandman will be no longer a 421
husbandman, the potter will cease to be a potter, and no one
will have the character of any distinct class in the State.
Now this is not of much consequence where the corruption
of society, and pretension to be what you are not, is confined
to cobblers ; but when the guardians of the laws and of the
government are only seeming and not real guardians, then
see how they turn the State upside down ; and on the other
hand they alone have the power of giving order and happiness
to the State. We mean our guardians to be true saviours
and not the destroyers of the State, whereas our opponent is
thinking of peasants at a festival, who are enjoying a life
of revelry, not of citizens who are doing their duty to the
State. But, if so, we mean different things, and he is
Two sources of evil: ^Wealth and Poverty. 109
speaking of something which is not a State. And therefore Republic
we must consider whether in appointing our guardians we V'
would look to their greatest happiness individually, or whether
this principle of happiness does not rather reside in the
State as a whole. But if the latter be the truth, then the
guardians and auxiliaries, and all others equally with them,
must be compelled or induced to do their own work in the
best way. And thus the whole State will grow up in a noble
order, and the several classes will receive the proportion
of happiness which nature assigns to them.
I think that you are quite right.
I wonder whether you will agree with another remark
which occurs to me.
What may that be ?
There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the
arts.
What are they ?
Wealth, I said, and poverty.
How do they act ?
The process is as follows : When a potter becomes rich, When an
will he, think you, any longer take the same pains with ^^rich
his art ? he becomes
Certainly not.
He will grow more and more indolent and careless ? poor,
Very true. has no
And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter ? b^toois
Yes ; he greatly deteriorates. with. The
But, on the other hand, if he has no money, and cannot be^ndthe^
provide himself with tools or instruments, he will not work poor nor
equally well himself, nor will he teach his sons or apprentices nch>
to work equally well.
Certainly not.
Then, under the influence either of poverty or of wealth,
workmen and their work are equally liable to degenerate ?
That is evident.
Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against
which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep
into the city unobserved.
What evils ?
422 Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of
no
Can o^lr State go to war with other States
Republic
2V.
SOCRATES, '
ADEIMANTUS.
But how,
being poor,
can she
contend
against a
wealthy
enemy?
Our wiry
soldiers
will be
more than
a match for
their fat
neigh-
bours.
And they
will have
allies who
will readily
join on con-
dition of
receiving
the spoil.
luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and vicious-
ness, and both of discontent.
That is very true, he replied ; but still I should like to
know, Socrates, how our city will be able to go to war,
especially against an enemy who is rich and powerful, if
deprived of the sinews of war.
There would certainly be a difficulty, I replied, in going to
war with one such enemy; but there is no difficulty where
there are two of them.
How so ? he asked.
In the first place, I said, if we have to fight, our side will
be trained warriors fighting against an army of rich men.
That is true, he said.
And do you not suppose, Adeimantus, that a single boxer
who was perfect in his art would easily be a match for two
stout and well-to-do gentlemen who were not boxers ?
Hardly, if they came upon him at once.
What, not, I said, if he were able to run away and then
turn and strike at the one who first came up ? And sup-
posing he were to do this several times under the heat of a
scorching sun, might he not, being an expert, overturn more
than one stout personage ?
Certainly, he said, there would be nothing wonderful in
that.
And yet rich men probably have a greater superiority in
the science and practise of boxing than they have in military
qualities.
Likely enough.
Then we may assume that our athletes will be able to fight
with two or three times their own number ?
I agree with you, for I think you right.
And suppose that, before engaging, our citizens send an
embassy to one of the two cities, telling them what is the
truth : Silver and gold we neither have nor are permitted to
have, but you may ; do you therefore come and help us in
war, and take the spoils of the other city : Who, on hearing
these words, would choose to fight against lean wiry dogs,
rather than, with the dogs on their side, against fat and
tender sheep ?
That is not likely ; and yet there might be a danger to the
The proper size of the State. 1 1 1
poor State if the wealth of many States were to be gathered
nto one.
But how simple of you to use the term State at all of any
but our own !
Why so ?
You ought to speak of other States in the plural number ; But many
not one of them is a city, but many cities, as they say in the ^JJ ^ ?
game. For indeed any city, however small, is in fact divided No : they
into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these
423 are at war with one another ; and in either there are many selves.
smaller divisions, and you would be altogether beside the mark
if you treated them all as a single State. But if you deal with Many
them as many, and give the wealth or power or persons of the
one to the others, you will always have a great many friends
and not many enemies. And your State, while the wise order
which has now been prescribed continues to prevail in her,
will be the greatest of States, I do not mean to say in reputa-
tion or appearance, but in deed and truth, though she number
not more than a thousand defenders. A single State which
is her equal you will hardly find, either among Hellenes or
barbarians, though many that appear to be as great and many
times greater.
That is most true, he said.
And what, I said, will be the best limit for our rulers to fix The limit
when they are considering the size of the State and the to,thesize
~ . of the State
amount of territory which they are to include, and beyond the possi-
which they will not go ? biluy of
What limit would you propose ?
I would allow the State to increase so far as is consistent
with unity; that, I think, is the proper limit.
Very good, he said.
Here then, I said, is another order which will have to be
conveyed to our guardians : Let our city be accounted neither
large nor small, but one and self-sufficing.
And surely, said he, this is not a very severe order which
we impose upon them.
And the other, said I, of which we were speaking before is The duty
lighter still, — I mean the duty of degrading the offspring of pfadJust:.
the guardians when inferior, and of elevating into the rank of Zens to the
guardians the offspring of the lower classes, when naturally rank for
112
Education the one great principle.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
which na-
ture in-
tended
them.
Good edu-
cation has
a cumula-
tive force
and affects
the breed.
No innova-
tions to be
made either
in music or
gymnastic.
Damon.
superior. The intention was, that, in the case of the citizens
generally, each individual should be put to the use for which
nature intended him, one to one work, and then every man
would do his own business, and be one and not many; ajid
so the whole city would be one and not many.
Yes, he said ; that is not so difficult.
The regulations which we are prescribing, my good Adei-
mantus, are not, as might be supposed, a number of great
principles, but trifles all, if care be taken, as the saying is, of
the one great thing, — a thing, however, which I would rather
call, not, great, but sufficient for our purpose.
What may that be ? he asked.
Education, I said, and nurture : If our citizens are well
educated, and grow into sensible men, they will easily see
their way through all these, as well as other matters which I
omit; such, for example, as marriage, the possession of
women and the procreation of children, which will all follow 424
the general principle that friends have all things in common,
as the proverb says.
That will be the best way of settling them.
Also, I said, the State, if once started well, moves with
accumulating force like a wheel. For good nurture and edu-
cation implant good constitutions, and these good constitutions
taking root in a good education improve more and more, and
this improvement affects the breed in man as in other
animals.
Very possibly, he said.
Then to sum up : This is the point to which, above all, the
attention of our rulers should be directed, — that music and
gymnastic be preserved in their original form, and no innova-
tion made. They must do their utmost to maintain them
intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard
'The newest song which the singers have1/
they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs,
but a new kind of song ; and this ought not to be praised, or
conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical
innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to
be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe
Od. i. 352.
The growth of licence. 1 1 3
him ;— he says that when modes of music change, the fimda- Republic
mental laws of the State always change with them.
Yes, said Adeimantus; and you may add my suffrage to SocRATES>
^ ' J J J ADEIMANTUS.
Damon s and your own.
Then, I said, our guardians must lay the foundations of
their fortress in music ?
Yes, he said ; the lawlessness of which you speak too
easily steals in.
Yes, I replied, in the form of amusement; and at first
sight it appears harmless.
Why, yes, he said, and there is no harm ; were it not that The spirit
little by little this spirit of licence, finding a home, impercep- ^g^55"
tibly penetrates into manners and customs ; whence, issuing ginning in
with greater force, it invades contracts between man and man, music»
and from contracts goes on to laws and constitutions, in utter
recklessness, ending at last, Socrates, by an overthrow of all the whole
rights, private as well as public.
Is that true ? I said.
That is my belief, he replied*
Then, as I was saying, our youth should be trained from
the first in a stricter system, for if amusements become lawless,
42 s and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never
grow up into well-conducted and virtuous citizens.
Very true, he said.
And when they have made a good beginning in play, and The habit
by the help of music have gained the habit of good order, J^^f ^
then this habit of order, in a manner how unlike the lawless education,
play of the others ! will accompany them in all their actions
and be a principle of growth to them, and if there be any
fallen places in the State will raise them up again".
Very true, he said.
Thus educated, they will invent for themselves any lesser if the citi-
rules which their predecessors have altogether neglected. zens have
the root of
What do you mean ? the matter
I mean such things as these : — when the young are to be in them«
silent before their elders ; how they are to show respect to supp^the
them by standing and making them sit ; what honour is due details for
to parents ; what garments or shoes are to be worn ; the l
mode of dressing the hair; deportment and manners in
general. You would agree with me ?
H4 l Neque vitia neque remedia eoruml
Republic Yes.
IV' But there is, I think, small wisdom in legislating about
SOCRATES, sucn matters, — I doubt if it is ever done : nor are any precise
ADEIMANTUS. . .
written enactments about them likely to be lasting.
Impossible.
It would seem, Adeimantus, that the direction in which
education starts a man, will determine his future life. Does
not like always attract like ?
To be sure.
Until some one rare and grand result is reached which
may be good, and may be the reverse of good ?
That is not to be denied.
And for this reason, I said, I shall not attempt to legislate
further about them.
Naturally enough, he replied.
The mere Well, and about the business of the agora, and the ordi-
admhris°f narv dealings between man and man, or again about agree-
tration may ments with artisans ; about insult and injury, or the
be omitted commencement of actions, and the appointment of juries,
what would you say ? there may also arise questions about
any impositions and exactions of market and harbour dues
which may be required, and in general about the regulations
of markets, police, harbours, and the like. But, oh heavens !
shall we condescend to legislate on any of these particulars ?
I think, he said, that there is no need to impose laws about
them on good men ; what regulations are necessary they will •
find out soon enough for themselves.
Yes, I said, my friend, if God will only preserve to them
the laws which we have given them.
And without divine help, said Adeimantus, they will go on
for ever making and mending their laws and their lives in the
hope of attaining perfection.
illustration You would compare them, I said, to those invalids who,
formers of nav^nS no self-restraint, will not leave off their habits of in-
the law temperance ?
hSs°m Exactly-
who are Yes, I said ; and what a delightful life they lead ! they are 426
always always doctoring and increasing and complicating their dis-
themseives, OI"ders, and always fancying that they will be cured by any
but will nostrum which anybody advises them to try.
Cutting' off the heads of a hydra. 115
Such cases are very common, he said, with invalids of this Republic
sort. IV'
Yes, I replied ; and the charming thing is that they deem
him their worst enemy who tells them the truth, which is
* never listen
simply that, unless they give up eating and drinking and to the
\venching and idling, neither drug nor cautery nor spell nor truth-
amulet nor any other remedy will avail.
Charming ! he replied. I see nothing charming in going
into a passion with a man who tells you what is right.
These gentlemen, I said, do not seem to be in your good
graces. * .
Assuredly not.
Nor would you praise the behaviour of States which act
like the men whom I was just now describing. For are there
not ill-ordered States in which the citizens are forbidden
under pain of death to alter the constitution ; and yet he who
most sweetly courts those who live under this regime and
indulges them and fawns upon them and is skilful in
anticipating and gratifying their humours is held to be a
great and good statesman — do not these States resemble
the persons whom I was describing?
Yes, he said ; the States are as bad as the men ; and I am
very far from praising them.
But do you not admire, I said, the coolness and dexterity
of these ready ministers of political corruption ?
Yes, he said, I do ; but not of all of them, for there are Dema-
some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into &°sues .
the belief that they are really statesmen, and these are not hands at
much to be admired. legislation
What do you mean ? I said ; you should have more feeling Reused
for them. When a man cannot measure, and a great many for their
others who cannot measure declare that he is four cubits ^l^nc
high, can he help believing what they say ? world.
Nay, he said, certainly not in that case.
Well, then, do not be angry with them; for are they not
as good as a play, trying their hand at paltry reforms
such as I was describing ; they are always fancying that
by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts,
and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not know-
ing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra ?
I 2
1 1 6 Where is justice ?
Republic Yes, he said ; that is just what they ar
I conceive, I said, that the true legisl
SOCRATES, himself with this class of enactments whether concerning
ADEIMANTUS,
Republic Yes, he said ; that is just what they are doing. 427
I conceive, I said, that the true legislator will not trouble
laws or the constitution either in an ill-ordered or in a well-
ordered State ; for in the former they are quite useless, and
in the latter there will be no difficulty in devising them;
and many of them will naturally flow out of our previous
regulations.
What, then, he said, is still remaining to us of the work of
legislation ?
Nothing to us, I replied ; but to* Apollo, the god of Delphi,
there remains the ordering of the greatest and noblest and
chiefest things of all.
Which are they ? he said.
Religion to The institution of temples and sacrifices, and the entire
AeGodof service °f g°ds, demigods, and heroes ; also the ordering
Delphi. of the repositories of the dead, and the rites which have
to be observed by him who would propitiate the inhabitants
of the world below. These are matters of which we are
ignorant ourselves, and as founders of a city we should be
unwise in trusting them to any interpreter but our ancestral
deity. He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel
of the earth, and he is the interpreter of religion to all
mankind.
You are right, and we will do as you propose.
But where, amid all this, is justice ? son of Ariston, tell
me where. Now that our city has been made habitable,
light a candle and search, and get your brother and Pole-
marchus and the rest of our friends to help, and let us
see where in it we can discover justice and where injustice,
and in what they differ from one another, and which of them
the man who would be happy should have for his portion,
whether seen or unseen by gods and men.
Nonsense, said Glaucon : did you not promise to search
yourself, saying that for you not to help justice in her need
would be an impiety?
I do not deny that I said so ; and as you remind me, I will
J>e as good as my word ; but you must join.
We will, he replied.
Well, then, I hope to make the discovery in this way:
The method of residues. 1 1 7
I mean to begin with the assumption that our State, if rightly Republic
ordered, is perfect. IV'
That is most certain. SOCRATES,
OLAUCON.
And being perfect, is therefore wise and valiant and tem-
perate and just.
That is likewise clear.
And whichever of these qualities we find in the State, the
one which is not found will be the residue ?
428 Very good.
If there were four things, and we were searching for one
of them, wherever it might be, the one sought for might be
known to us from the first, and there would be no further
trouble ; or we might know the other three first, and then the
fourth would clearly be the one left.
Very true, he said.
And is not a similar method to be pursued about the virtues,
which are also four in number ?
Clearly.
First among the virtues found in the State, wisdom comes The place
into view, and in this I detect a certain peculiarity. Virtues in
What is that ? the state :
The State which we have been describing is said to be ^Th^ls"
dom of the
wise as being good in counsel ? statesman
Very true. advises, not
And good counsel is clearly a kind of knowledge, for not Scidararts
by ignorance, but by knowledge, do men counsel well ? or pursuits,
Clearly.
And the kinds of knowledge in a State are many and
diverse ?
Of course.
There is the knowledge of the carpenter ; but is that the
sort of knowledge which gives a city the title of wise and
good in counsel?
Certainly not ; that would only give a city the reputation
of skill in carpentering.
Then a city is not to be called wise because possessing
a knowledge which counsels for the best about wooden
implements ?
Certainly not.
Nor by reason of a knowledge which advises about brazen
n8
The nature (i) of wisdom, (2) of courage.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
but about
the whole
State.
The states-
men or
guardians
are the
smallest of
all classes
in the State.
pots, he said, nor as possessing any other similar know«
ledge ?
Not by reason of any of them, he said.
Nor yet by reason of a knowledge which cultivates the
earth ; that would give the city the name of agricultural ?
Yes.
Well, I said, and is there any knowledge in our recently-
founded State among any of the citizens which advises, not
about any particular thing in the State, but about the whole,
and considers how a State can best deal with itself and with
other States ?
There certainly is.
And what js this knowledge, and among whom is it found ?
I asked.
It is the knowledge of the guardians, he replied, and is
found among those whom we were just now describing as
perfect guardians.
And what is the name which the city derives from the
possession of this sort of knowledge ?
The name of good in counsel and truly wise.
And will there be in our city more of these true guardians
or more smiths ?
The smiths, he replied, will be far more numerous.
Will not the guardians be the smallest of all the classes
who receive a name from the profession of some kind of
knowledge ?
Much the smallest.
And so by reason of the smallest part or class, and of the
knowledge which resides in this presiding and ruling part of
itself, the whole State, being thus constituted according
to nature, will be wise ; and this, which has the only know- 429
ledge worthy to be called wisdom, has been ordained by
nature to be of all classes the least.
Most true.
Thus, then, I said, the nature and place in the State of
one of the four virtues has somehow or other been dis-
covered.
And, in my humble opinion, very satisfactorily discovered,
he replied.
Again, I said, there is no difficulty in seeing the nature of
The nature of courage. 119
courage, and in what part that quality resides which gives the Republic
name of courageous to the State. IV'
How do you mean ? SOCRATES,
Why, I said, every one who calls any State courageous or
cowardly, will be thinking of the part which fights and goes courage
out to war on the State's behalf. which
No one, he replied, would ever think of any other. city cou.
The rest of the citizens may be courageous or may be rageous
cowardly, but their courage or cowardice will not, as I con- J^[^nfn
ceive, have the effect of making the city either the one or the the soldier.
other.
Certainly not.
The city will be courageous in virtue of a portion of her- it is the
self which preserves under all circumstances that opinion JJJ^y re_
about the nature of things to be feared and not to be feared serves right
in which our legislator educated them ; and this is what you °£o™°n
term courage. things to
I should like to hear what you are saying once more, for I be feared
i t • i , T f i i • and not to
do not think that I perfectly understand you. be feared.
I mean that courage is a kind of salvation.
Salvation of what ?
Of the opinion respecting things to be feared, what they
are and of what nature, which the law implants through
education ; and I mean by the words ' under all circumstances '
to intimate that in pleasure or in pain, or under the influence
of desire or fear, a man preserves, and does not lose this
opinion. Shall I give you an illustration ?
If you please.
You know, I said, that dyers, when they want to dye wool Illustration
for making the true sea-purple, begin by selecting their white
colour first ; this they prepare and dress with much care and ing.
pains, in order that the white ground may take the purple hue
in full perfection. The dyeing then proceeds ; and whatever
is dyed in this manner becomes a fast colour, and no washing
either with lyes or without them can take away the bloom.
But, when the ground has not been duly prepared, you will
have noticed how poor is the look either of purple or of any
other colour.
Yes, he said ; I know that they have a washed-out and
ridiculous appearance.
I2O
Temperance, or the mastery of self.
Republic
IV,
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Our sol-
diers must
take the
dye of the
laws.
Two other
virtues,
temperance
and justice,
which must
be con-
sidered in
their proper
order.
Then now, I said, you will understand what our object was
in selecting our soldiers, and educating them in music and 43°
gymnastic ; we were contriving influences which would prepare
them to take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the colour
of their opinion about dangers and of every other opinion
was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to
be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure — mightier
agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye ; or by
sorrow, fear, and desire, the mightiest of all other solvents.
And this sort of universal saving power of true opinion in
conformity with law about real and false dangers I call and
maintain to be courage, unless you disagree.
But I agree, he replied ; for I suppose that you mean to
exclude mere uninstructed courage, such as that of a wild
beast or of a slave — this, in your opinion, is not the courage
which the law ordains, and ought to have another name.
Most certainly.
Then I may infer courage to be such as you describe ?
Why, yes, said I, you may, and if you add the words ' of
a citizen/ you will not be far wrong; — hereafter, if you like,
we will carry the examination further, but at present we are
seeking not for courage but justice ; and for the purpose of
our enquiry we have said enough.
You are right, he replied.
Two virtues remain to be discovered in the State — first,
temperance, and then justice which is the end of our search.
Very true.
Now, can we find justice without troubling ourselves about
temperance ?
I do not know how that can be accomplished, he said, nor
do I desire that justice should be brought to light and temper-
ance lost sight of; and therefore I wish that you would do
me the favour of considering temperance first.
Certainly, I replied, I should not be justified in refusing
your request.
Then consider, he said.
Yes, I replied ; I will ; and as far as I can at present see,
the virtue of temperance has more of the nature of harmony
and symphony than the preceding.
How so ? he asked.
States, like individuals, may be temperate. 121
Temperance, I replied, is the ordering or controlling of Republic
certain pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough im-
plied in the saying of ' a man being his own master ; ' and
other traces of the same notion may be found in language.
No doubt, he said.
There is something ridiculous in the expression ' master of The tem-
431 himself;' for the master is also the servant and the servant jJJ^rof
the master; and in all these modes of speaking the same himself, but
person is denoted. the same
_ person,
Certainly. when in-
The meaning is, I believe, that in the human soul there is temperate,
a better and also a worse principle ; and when the better has
the worse under control, then a man is said to be master of himself.
himself; and this is a term of praise : but when, owing to evil
education or association, the better principle, which is also
the smaller, is overwhelmed by the greater mass of the worse
— in this case he is blamed and is called the slave of self and
unprincipled.
Yes, there is reason in that.
And now, I said, look at our newly-created State, and there
you will find one of these two conditions realized ; for the
State, as you will acknowledge, may be justly called master
of itself, if the words * temperance ' and ' self-mastery ' truly
express the rule of the better part over the worse.
Yes, he said, I see that what you say is true.
Let me further note that the manifold and complex
pleasures and desires and pains are generally found in
children and women and servants, and in the freemen so
called who are of the lowest and more numerous class.
Certainly, he said.
Whereas the simple and moderate desires which follow
reason, and are under the guidance of mind and true opinion,
are to be found only in a few, and those the best born and
best educated.
Very true.
These two, as you may perceive, have a place in our State ; The State
and the meaner desires of the many are held down by the ^ich has
virtuous desires and wisdom of the few. sions and
That I perceive, he said. desires of
Then if there be any city which may be described as controlled
122
Temperance in States is the harmony of classes.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
by the few
may be
rightly
called tem-
perate.
Temper-
ance re-
sides in
the whole
State.
Justice is
not far off.
master of its own pleasures and desires, and master of itself,
ours may claim such a designation ?
Certainly, he replied.
It may also be called temperate, and for the same reasons ?
Yes.
And if there be any State in which rulers and subjects will
be agreed as to the question who are to rule, that again will
be our State ?
Undoubtedly.
And the citizens being thus agreed among themselves, in
which class will temperance be found — in the rulers or in
the subjects ?
In both, as I should imagine, he replied.
Do you observe that we were not far wrong in our guess
that temperance was a sort of harmony ?
Why so?
Why, because temperance is unlike courage and wisdom,
each of which resides in a part only, the one making the
State wise and the other valiant ; not so temperance, which 432
extends to the whole, and runs through all the notes of the
scale, and produces a harmony of the weaker and the
stronger and the middle class, whether you suppose them
to be stronger or weaker in wisdom or power or numbers
or wealth, or anything else. Most truly then may we deem
temperance to be the agreement of the naturally superior and
inferior, as to the right to rule of either, both in states and
individuals.
I entirely agree with you.
And so, I said, we may consider three out of the four
virtues to have been discovered in our State. The last of
those qualities which make a state virtuous must be justice,
if we only knew what that was.
The inference is obvious.
The time then has arrived, Glaucon, when, like huntsmen,
we should surround the cover, and look sharp that justice
does not steal away, and pass out of sight and escape us ; for
beyond a doubt she is somewhere in this country: watch
therefore and strive to catch a sight of her, and if you see
her first, let me know.
Would that I could ! but you should regard me rather as
Justice is every man doing his own business. 123
a follower who has just eyes enough to see what you show Republic
him — that is about as much as I am good for.
Offer up a prayer with me and follow. SOCRATES,
r r J GLAUCON.
I will, but you must show me the way.
Here is no path, I said, and the wood is dark and per-
plexing ; still we must push on.
Let us push on.
Here I saw something : Halloo ! I said, I begin to perceive
a track, and I believe that the quarry will not escape.
Good news, he said.
Truly, I said, we are stupid fellows.
Why so?
Why, my good sir, at the beginning of our enquiry, ages
ago, there was justice tumbling out at our feet, and we never
saw her; nothing could be more ridiculous. Like people
who go about looking for what they have in their hands —
that was the way with us — we looked not at what we were
seeking, but at what was far off in the distance; and
therefore, I suppose, we missed her.
What do you mean ?
I mean to say that in reality for a long time past we have
been talking of justice, and have failed to recognise her.
I grow impatient at the length of your exordium.
433 Well then, tell me, I said, whether I am right or not : You We had
remember the original principle which we were always laying jj^^
down at the foundation of the State, that one man should when we
practise one thing only, the thing to which his nature was sP°ke of
best adapted ; — now justice is this principle or a part of it. doing one
Yes, we often said that one man should do one thing only, thing only.
Further, we affirmed that justice was doing one's own
business, and not being a busybody; we said so again and
again, and many others have said the same to us.
Yes, we said so.
Then to do one's own business in a certain way may be
assumed to be justice. Can you tell me whence I derive this
inference ?
I cannot, but I should like to be told.
Because I think that this is the only virtue which remains From
in the State when the other virtues of temperance and courage an?ther
and wisdom are abstracted; and, that this is the ultimate viewjustice
124
The four virtues in relation to the State.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
is the resi-
due of
the three
others.
Our idea is
confirmed
by the ad-
ministra-
tion of jus-
tice in law-
suits. No
man is to
have what .
is not his
own.
Illustra-
tion:
Classes,
cause and condition of the existence of all of them, and while
remaining in them is also their preservative ; and we were
saying that if the three were discovered by us, justice would
be the fourth or remaining one.
That follows of necessity.
If we are asked to determine which of these four qualities
by its presence contributes most to the excellence of the
State, whether the agreement of rulers and subjects, or the
preservation in the soldiers of the opinion which the law
ordains about the true nature of dangers, or wisdom and
watchfulness in the rulers, or whether this other which I
am mentioning, and which is found in children and women,
slave and freeman, artisan, ruler, subject, — the quality, I
mean, of every one doing his own work, and not being a
busybody, would claim the palm— the question is not so easily
answered.
Certainly, he replied, there would be a difficulty in saying
which.
Then the power of each individual in the State to do his
own work appears to compete with the other political virtues,
wisdom, temperance, courage.
Yes, he said.
And the virtue which enters into this competition is
justice ?
Exactly.
Let us look at the question from another point of view :
Are not the rulers in a State those to whom you would
entrust the office of determining suits at law ?
Certainly.
And are suits decided on any other ground but that a man
may neither take what is another's, nor be deprived of what
is his own ?
Yes ; that is their principle.
Which is a just principle ?
Yes.
Then on this view also justice will be admitted to be the
having and doing what is a man's own, and belongs to him ?
Very true. 434
Think, now, and say whether you agree with me or not.
Suppose a carpenter to be doing the business of a cobbler,
The just man and the just Stale. 125
or a cobbler of a carpenter ; and suppose them to exchange Republic
their implements or their duties, or the same person to be
doing the work of both, or whatever be the change ; do you
think that any great harm would result to the State ? ljke . d.
Not much. viduals,
But when the cobbler or any other man whom nature sho^not
designed to be a trader, having his heart lifted up by wealth with one
or strength or the number of his followers, or any like ad- another>s
vantage, attempts to force his way into the class of warriors, Sansf*
or a warrior into that of legislators and guardians, for which
he is unfitted, and either to take the implements or the duties
of the other; or when one man is trader, legislator, and
warrior all in one, then I think you will agree with me in
saying that this interchange and this meddling of one with
another is the ruin of the State.
Most true.
Seeing then, I said, that there are three distinct classes,
any meddling of one with another, or the change of one into
another, is the greatest harm to the State, and may be most
justly termed evil-doing ?
Precisely.
And the greatest degree of evil-doing to one's own city
would be termed by you injustice ?
Certainly.
This then is injustice; and on the other hand when the
trader, the auxiliary, and the guardian each do their own
business, that is justice, and will make the city just.
I agree with you.
We will not, I said, be over-positive as yet ; but if, on trial, From the
this Conception of justice be verified in the individual as well ^phjof"
as in the State, there will be no longer any room for doubt ; the state
if it be not verified, we must have a fresh enquiry. First let we wiu
' f . . nowreturn
us complete the old investigation, which we began, as you totheindi-
remember, under the impression that, if we could previously
examine justice on the larger scale, there would be less
difficulty in discerning her in the individual. That larger
example appeared to be the State, and accordingly we con-
structed as good a one as we could, knowing well that in the
good State justice would be found. Let the discovery which
we made be now applied to the individual — if they agree,
126
The same principles guide individual and State.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
How can
we decide
whether or
no the soul
has three
distinct
principles ?
Our
method is
inadequate,
and for a
better and
longer one
we have not
at present
time.
we shall be satisfied; or, if there be a difference in the
individual, we will come back to the State and have another
trial of the theory. The friction of the two when rubbed 435
together may possibly strike a light in which justice will
shine forth, and the vision which is then revealed we will
fix in our souls.
That will be in regular course ; let us do as you say.
I proceeded to ask : When two things, a greater and less,
are called by the same name, are they like or unlike in so far
as they are called the same ?
Like, he replied.
The just man then, if we regard the idea of justice only,
will be like the just State?
He will.
And a State was thought by us to be just when the three
classes in the State severally did their own business ; and
also thought to be temperate and valiant and wise by
reason of certain other affections and qualities of these same
classes ?
True, he said.
And so of the individual ; we may assume that he has the
same three principles in his own soul which are found in
the State ; and he may be rightly described in the same
terms, because he is affected in the same manner ?
Certainly, he said.
Once more then, O my friend, we have alighted upon an
easy question — whether the soul has these three principles
or not ?
An easy question ! Nay, rather, Socrates, the proverb
holds that hard is the good.
Very true, I said ; and I do not think that the method
which we are employing is at all adequate to the accurate
solution of this question ; the true method is another and a
longer one. Still we may arrive at a solution not below the
level of the previous enquiry.
May we not be satisfied with that ? he said ; — under the
circumstances, I am quite content.
I too, I replied, shall be extremely well satisfied.
Then faint not in pursuing the speculation, he said.
Must we not acknowledge, I said, that in each of us there
Are these principles one or many? 127
are the same principles and habits which there are in the Republic
State ; and that from the individual they pass into the
State ? — how else can they come there ? Take the quality SOCRATES,
w -L j GLAUCON.
of passion or spirit; — it would be ridiculous to imagine
that this quality, when found in States, is not derived from
the individuals who are supposed to possess it, e. g. the
Thracians, Scythians, and in general the northern nations ;
and the same may be said of the love of knowledge, which is
the special characteristic of our part of the world, or of the
436 love of money, which may, with equal truth, be attributed to
the Phoenicians and Egyptians.
Exactly so, he said.
There is no difficulty in understanding this.
None whatever.
But the question is not quite so easy when we proceed Adigres-
to ask whether these principles are three or one ; whether, ^ciTan
that is to say, we learn with one part of our nature, are attempt is
angry with another, and with a third part desire the satis- mad.e to
faction of our natural appetites ; or whether the whole soul logical
comes into play in each sort of action — to determine that is clearness.
the difficulty.
Yes, he said ; there lies the difficulty.
Then let us now try and determine whether they are the
same or different.
How can we? he asked.
I replied as follows : The same thing clearly cannot act The cri-
or be acted upon in the same part or in relation to the same ten°n °L
truth : No-
thing at the same time, in contrary ways ; and therefore thing can
whenever this contradiction occurs in things apparently the be and not
J , be at the
same, we know that they are really not the same, but same time
different. in the same
Good.
For example, I said, can the same thing be at rest and in
motion at the same time in the same part ?
Impossible.
Still, I said, let us have a more precise statement of terms,
lest we should hereafter fall out by the way. Imagine the
case of a man who is standing and also moving his hands
and his head, and suppose a person to say that one and
the same person is in motion and at rest at the same moment
128
The nature of contraries.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Anticipa-
tion of
objections
to this ' law
of thought.'
Likes and
dislikes
exist in
many
forms.
— to such a mode of speech we should object, and should
rather say that one part of him is in motion while another is
at rest.
Very true.
And suppose the objector to refine still further, and to
draw the nice distinction that not only parts of tops, but
whole tops, when they spin round with their pegs fixed on
the spot, are at rest and in motion at the same time (and he
may say the same of anything which revolves in the same
spot), his objection would not be admitted by us, because
in such cases things are not at rest and in motion in the
same parts of themselves ; we should rather say that they
have both an axis and a circumference ; and that the axis
stands still, for there is no deviation from the perpen-
dicular; and that the circumference goes round. But if,
while revolving, the axis inclines either to the right or left,
forwards or backwards, then in no point of view can they
be at rest.
That is the correct mode of describing them, he replied.
Then none of these objections will confuse us, or incline
us to believe that the same thing at the same time, in the
same part or in relation to the same thing, can act or be 437
acted upon in contrary ways.
Certainly not, according to my way of thinking.
Yet, I said, that we may not be compelled to examine all
such objections, and prove at length that they are untrue, let
us assume their absurdity, and go forward on the under-
standing that hereafter,, if this assumption turn out to be
untrue, all the consequences which follow shall be with-
drawn.
Yes, he said, that will be the best way.
Well, I said, would you not allow that assent and dissent,
desire and aversion, attraction and repulsion, are all of them
opposites, whether they are regarded as active' or passive
(for that makes no difference in the fact of their opposition) ?
Yes, he said, they are opposites.
Well, I said, and hunger and thirst, and the desires in
general, and again willing and wishing, — all these you would
refer to the classes already mentioned. You would say —
would you not ? — that the soul of him who desires is seeking
Relative terms. 129
after the object of his desire ; or that he is drawing to himself Republic
the thing which he wishes to possess : or again, when a IV'
person wants anything to be given him, his mind, longing for SOCRATES,
the realization of his desire, intimates his wish to have it by
a nod of assent, as if he had been asked a question ?
Very true.
And what would you say of unwillingness and dislike and
the absence of desire ; should not these be referred to the
opposite class of repulsion and rejection ?
Certainly.
Admitting this to be true of desire generally, let us suppose
a particular class of desires, and out of these we will select
hunger and thirst, as they are termed, which are the most
obvious of them ?
Let us take that class, he said.
The object of one is food, and of the other drink?
Yes.
And here comes the point : is not thirst the desire which There may
the soul has of drink, and of drink only; not of drink qualified ^^le
by anything else ; for example, warm or cold, or much or qualified
little, or, in a word, drink of any particular sort : but if the *hirft(
thirst be accompanied by heat, then the desire is of cold spectivety a
drink ; or, if accompanied by cold, then of warm drink ; or, simple or
if the thirst be excessive, then the drink which is desired will object! *
be excessive ; or, if not great, the quantity of drink will also
be small : but thirst pure and simple will desire drink pure
and simple, which is the natural satisfaction of thirst, as food
is of hunger ?
Yes, he said ; the simple desire is, as you say, in every
case of the simple object, and the qualified desire of the
qualified object.
438 But here a confusion may arise ; and I should wish to Exception :
guard against an opponent starting up and saying that no ^f/6"11
man desires drink only, but good drink, or food only, but presses, not
good food ; for good is the universal object of desire, and a Particu-
, . , • i . .,1 .«'«.«« ^ , !ar, but an
thirst being a desire, will necessarily be thirst after good universal
drink ; and the same is true of every other desire. relation.
Yes, he replied, the opponent might have something to
say.
Nevertheless I should still maintain, that of relatives some
K
130
Simple and compound terms.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Illustration
of the argu-
ment from
the use of
language
about cor-
relative
terms.
Recapitu-
lation.
Anticipa-
tion of a
possible
confusion.
have a quality attached to either term of the relation ; others
are simple and have their correlatives simple.
I do not know what you mean.
Well, you know of course that the greater is relative to the
less?
Certainly.
And the much greater to the much less ?
Yes.
And the sometime greater to the sometime less, and the
greater that is to be to the less that is to be ?
Certainly, he said.
And so of more and less, and of other correlative terms,
such as the double and the half, or again, the heavier and the
lighter, the swifter and the slower ; and of hot and cold, and
of any other relatives ; — is not this true of all of them ?
Yes.
And does not the same principle hold in the sciences?
The object of science is knowledge (assuming that to be the
true definition), but the object of a particular science is a
particular kind of knowledge ; I mean, for example, that the
science of house-building is a kind of knowledge which is
defined and distinguished from other kinds and is therefore
termed architecture.
Certainly.
Because it has a particular quality which no other has ?
Yes.
And it has this particular quality because it has an object
of a particular kind ; and this is true of the other arts and
sciences ?
Yes.
Now, then, if I have made myself clear, you will under-
stand my original meaning in what I said about relatives.
My meaning was, that if one term of a relation is taken alone,
the other is taken alone ; if one term is qualified, the other
is also qualified. I do not mean to say that relatives may
not be disparate, or that the science of health is healthy, or
of disease necessarily diseased, or that the sciences of good
and evil are therefore good and evil ; but only that, when the
term science is no longer used absolutely, but has a qualified
object which in this case is the nature of health and disease,
The first have simple, the second qualified objects. 131
it becomes defined, and is hence called not merely science, Republic
but the science of medicine. IV-
I quite understand, and I think as you do. SOCRATES,
TTT f GLAUCON.
439 Would you not say that thirst is one of these essentially
relative terms, having clearly a relation —
Yes, thirst is relative to drink.
And a certain kind of thirst is relative to a certain kind of
drink ; but thirst taken alone is neither of much nor little,
nor of good nor bad, nor of any particular kind of drink, but
of drink only ?
Certainly.
Then the soul of the thirsty one, in so far as he is
thirsty, desires only drink ; for this he yearns and tries to
obtain it ?
That is plain.
And if you suppose something which pulls a thirsty soul The law of
away from drink, that must be different from the thirsty ^tradic"
principle which draws him like a beast to drink ; for, as we
were saying, the same thing cannot at the same time with the
same part of itself act in contrary ways about the same.
Impossible.
No more than you can say that the hands of the archer
push and pull the bow at the same time, but what you say is
that one hand pushes and the other pulls.
Exactly so, he replied.
And might a man be thirsty, and yet unwilling to drink ?
Yes, he said, it constantly happens.
And in such a case what is one to say ? Would you not
say that there was something in the soul bidding a man to
drink, and something else forbidding him, which is other and
stronger than the principle which bids him ?
I should say so.
And the forbidding principle is derived from reason, and The oppo-
that which bids and attracts proceeds from passion and Desire and
disease ? reason.
Clearly.
Then we may fairly assume that they are two, and that they
differ from one another ; the one with which a man reasons,
we may call the rational principle of the soul, the other,
with which he loves and hungers and thirsts and feels the
K 2
132
The story of Leontius.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The third
principle of
spirit or
passion
illustrated
by an ex-
ample.
Passion
never takes
part with
desire
against
reason.
Righteous
indignation
never felt
by a person
of noble
character
when he
deservedly
suffers.
flutterings of any other desire, may be termed the irrational
or appetitive, the ally of sundry pleasures and satisfactions ?
Yes, he said, we may fairly assume them to be different.
Then let us finally determine that there are two principles
existing in the soul. And what of passion, or spirit ? Is
it a third, or akin to one of the preceding ?
I should be inclined to say — akin to desire.
Well, I said, there is a story which I remember to have
heard, and in which I put faith. The story is, that Leontius,
the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus,
under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead
bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a
desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them;
for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length 440
the desire got the better of him ; and forcing them open, he
ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take
your fill of the fair sight.
I have heard the story myself, he said.
The moral of the tale is, that anger at times goes to war
with desire, as though they were two distinct things.
Yes ; that is the meaning, he said.
And are there not many other cases in which we observe
that when a man's desires violently prevail over his reason,
he reviles himself, and is angry at the violence within him,
and that in this struggle, which is like the struggle of factions
in a State, his spirit is on the side of his reason ; — but for the
passionate or spirited element to take part with the desires
when reason decides that she should not be opposed \ is
a sort of thing which I believe that you never observed
occurring in yourself, nor, as I should imagine, in any one
else?
Certainly not.
Suppose that a man thinks he has done a wrong to another,
the nobler he is the less able is he to feel indignant at any
suffering, such as hunger, or cold, or any other pain which
the injured person may inflict upon him — these he deems to be
just, and, as I say, his anger refuses to be excited by them.
True, he said.
But when he thinks that he is the sufferer of the wrong,
1 Reading ^ fetv avnirpdrrfiv, without a comma after 5e*V.
Passion or spirit opposed to desire. 133
then he boils and chafes, and is on the side of what he Republic
believes to be justice ; and because he suffers hunger or cold
or other pain he is only the more determined to persevere and
conquer. His noble spirit will not be quelled until he either
slays or is slain ; or until he hears the voice of the shepherd,
that is, reason, bidding his dog bark no more.
The illustration is perfect, he replied ; and in our State, as
we were saying, the auxiliaries were to be dogs, and to hear
the voice of the rulers, who are their shepherds.
I perceive, I said, that you quite understand me ; there is,
however, a further point which I wish you to consider.
What point ?
You remember that passion or spirit appeared at first sight
to be a kind of desire, but now we should say quite the con-
trary; for in the conflict of the soul spirit is arrayed on the
side of the rational principle.
Most assuredly.
But a further question arises : Is passion different from Not two,
reason also, or only a kind of reason ; in which latter case, princi^
instead of three principles in the soul, there will only be two, in the soul,
441 the rational and the concupiscent ; or rather, as the State was
composed of three classes, traders, auxiliaries, counsellors, so
may there not be in the individual soul a third element which
is passion or spirit, and when not corrupted by bad education
is the natural auxiliary of reason ?
Yes, he said, there must be a third.
Yes, I replied, if passion, which has already been shown
to be different from desire, turn out also to be different from
reason.
But that is easily proved : — We may observe even in young
children that they are full of spirit, almost as soon as they
are born, whereas some of them never seem to attain to the
use of reason, and most of them late enough.
Excellent, I said, and you may see passion equally in brute
animals, which is a further proof of the truth of what you are
saying. And we may once more appeal to the words of Appeal to
Homer, which have been already quoted by us,
'He smote his breast, and thus rebuked his soul1;'
1 Od. xx. 17, quoted supra, III. 390 D.
134
The individual like the State.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The con-
clusion that
the same
three prin-
ciples exist
both in the
State and
in the indi-
vidual ap-
plied to
each of
them.
Music and
gymnastic
will har-
monize
passion
and reason.
These two
combined
will control
desire.
for in this verse Homer has clearly supposed the power which
reasons about the better and worse to be different from the
unreasoning anger which is rebuked by it.
Very true, he said.
And so, after much tossing, we have reached land, and are
fairly agreed that the same principles which exist in the State
exist also in the individual, and that they are three in
number.
Exactly.
Must we not then infer that the individual is wise in the
same way, and in virtue of the same quality which makes the
State wise ?
Certainly.
Also that the same quality which constitutes courage in the
State constitutes courage in the individual, and that both the
State and the individual bear the same relation to all the
other virtues ?
Assuredly.
And the individual will be acknowledged by us to be just
in the same way in which the State is just ?
That follows of course.
We cannot but remember that the justice of the State con-
sisted in each of the three classes doing the work of its own
class ?
We are not very likely to have forgotten, he said.
We must recollect that the individual in whom the several
qualities of his nature do their own work will be just, and
will do his own work ?
Yes, he said, we must remember that too.
And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and
has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or
spirited principle to be the subject and ally ?
Certainly.
And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and
gymnastic will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining
the reason with noble words and lesso'ns, and moderating
and soothing and civilizing the wildness of passion by 442
harmony and rhythm?
Quite true, he said.
And these two, thus nurtured and educated, and having
The alliance of passion and reason. 135
learned truly to know their own functions, will rule * over the Republic
concupiscent, which in each of us is the largest part of the
soul and by nature most insatiable of gain ; over this they
will keep guard, lest, waxing great and strong with the fulness
of bodily pleasures, as they are termed, the concupiscent soul,
no longer confined to her own sphere, should attempt to
enslave and rule those who are not her natural-born subjects,
and overturn the whole life of man ?
Very true, he said.
Both together will they not be the best defenders of the and will be
whole soul and the whole body against attacks from without ; defenders
the one counselling, and the other fighting under his leader, both of
and courageously executing his commands and counsels ? body and
True.
And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains The cour-
in pleasure and in pain the commands of reason about what aseous-
he ought or ought not to fear ?
Right, he replied.
And him we call wise who has in him that little part which The wise.
rules, and which proclaims these commands; that part too
being supposed to have a knowledge of what is for the
interest of each of the three parts and of the whole ?
Assuredly.
And would you not say that he is temperate who has these The tem-
same elements in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling Perate-
principle of reason, and the two subject ones of spirit and
desire are equally agreed that reason ought to rule, and do
not rebel ?
Certainly, he said, that is the true account of temperance
whether in the State or individual.
And surely, I said, we have explained again and again The just.
how and by virtue of what quality a man will be just.
That is very certain.
And is justice dimmer in the individual, and is her form
different, or is she the same which we found her to be in the
State?
1 Reading irpoffTaTfacrov with Bekker; or, if the reading
which is found in the MSS., be adopted, then the nominative must be supplied
from the previous sentence : ' Music and gymnastic will place in authority
over . . .' This is very awkward, and the awkwardness is increased by the
necessity of changing the subject at
136
Justice in the individual and in the State.
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The nature
of justice
illustrated
by com-
monplace
instances.
We have
realized the
hope enter-
tained in
the first
construc-
tion of the
State.
The three
principles
harmonize
in one.
There is no difference in my opinion, he said.
Because, if any doubt is still lingering in our minds, a few
commonplace instances will satisfy us of the truth of what I
am saying.
What sort of instances do you mean ?
If the case is put to us, must we not admit that the just
State, or the man who is trained in the principles of such a 443
State, will be less likely than the unjust to make away with
a deposit of gold or silver ? Would any one deny this ?
No one, he replied.
Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege or
theft, or treachery either to his friends or to his country ?
Never.
Neither will he ever break faith where there have been
oaths or agreements ?
Impossible.
No one will be less likely to commit adultery, or to dis-
honour his father and mother, or to fail in his religious
duties ?
No one.
And the reason is that each part of him is doing its own
business, whether in ruling or being ruled ?
Exactly so.
Are you satisfied then that the quality which makes such
men and such states is justice, or do you hope to discover
some other ?
Not I, indeed.
Then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion
which we entertained at the beginning of our work of con-
struction, that some divine power must have conducted us to
a primary form of justice, has now been verified ?
Yes, certainly.
And the division of labour which required the carpenter
and the shoemaker and the rest of the citizens to be doing
each his own business, and not another's, was a shadow of
justice, and for that reason it was of use ?
Clearly.
But in reality justice was such as we were describing,
being concerned however, not with the outward man, but
with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of
The true conception of the. just and ^l,nj^<,st. 137
man : for the just man does not permit the several elements Republic
within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to
do the work of others, — he sets in order his own inner life, SOCRATES.
• 11- • GLAUCON.
and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with him-
self; and when he has bound together the three principles The har-
within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower,
and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals —
when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many,
but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted
nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a
matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in
some affair of politics or private business ; always thinking
and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this
harmonious condition, just and good action, and the know-
ledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any
444 time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the
opinion which presides over it ignorance.
You have said the exact truth, Socrates.
Very good ; and if we were to affirm that we had dis-
covered the just man and the just State, and the nature of
justice in each of them, we should not be telling a falsehood ?
Most certainly not.
May we say so, then ?
Let us say so.
And now, I said, injustice has to be considered.
Clearly.
Must not injustice be a strife which arises among the three injustice
principles — a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up
of a part of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlaw- tice.
ful authority, which is made by a rebellious subject against
a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal, — what is all
this confusion and delusion but injustice, and intemperance
and cowardice and ignorance, and every form of vice ?
Exactly so.
And if the nature of justice and injustice be known, then
the meaning of acting unjustly and being unjust, or, again, of
acting justly, will also be perfectly clear?
What do you mean ? he said.
Why, I said, they are like disease and health ; being in the
soul just what disease and health are in the body.
138
Republic
IV.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Analogy of
body and
soul.
Health :
disease : :
justice :
injustice.
The old
question,
whether
the just or
the unjust is
the happier,
has become
ridiculous.
Justice a natural self-government.
How so ? he said.
Why, I said, that which is healthy causes health, and that
which is unhealthy causes disease.
Yes.
And just actions cause justice, and unjust actions cause
injustice ?
That is certain.
And the creation of health is the institution of a natural
order and government of one by another in the parts of the
body ; and the creation of disease is the production of a state
of things at variance with this natural order ?
True.
And is not the creation of justice the institution of a
natural order and government of one by another in the parts
of the soul, and the creation of injustice the production of a
state of things at variance with the natural order ?
Exactly so, he said.
Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the
soul, and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the
same?
True.
And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices
to vice ?
Assuredly.
Still our old question of the comparative advantage of 445
justice and injustice has not been answered : Which is the
more profitable, to be just and act justly and practise virtue,
whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or to be unjust and
act unjustly, if only unpunished and unreformed ?
In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become
ridiculous. We know that, when the bodily constitution is
gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all
kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all
power; and shall we be told that when the very essence
of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life is
still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do what-
ever he likes with the single exception that he is not to
acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice and
vice ; assuming them both to be such as we have described ?
Yes, I said, the question is, as you say, ridiculous. Still,
One form of virtue^ four of vice. 139
as we are near the spot at which we may see the truth in the Republic
clearest manner with our own eyes, let us not faint by the IV'
Way. SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Certainly not, he replied.
Come up hither, I said, and behold the various forms of
vice, those of them, I mean, which are worth looking at.
I am following you, he replied : proceed.
I said, The argument seems to have reached a height
from which, as from some tower of speculation, a man may
look down and see that virtue is one, but that the forms of
vice are innumerable; there being four special ones which
are deserving of note.
What do you mean ? he said.
I mean, I replied, that there appear to be as many forms of As ™any
the soul as there are distinct forms of the State. thesoui
H ow many ? as of the
There are five of the State, and five of the soul, I said.
What are they ?
The first, I said, is that which we have been describing,
and which may be said to have two names, monarchy and
aristocracy, accordingly as rule is exercised by one distin-
guished man or by many.
True, he replied.
But I regard the two names as describing one form only ;
for whether the government is in the hands of one or many,
if the governors have been trained in the manner which we
have supposed, the fundamental laws of the State will be
maintained.
That is true, he replied.
BOOK V.
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON,
ADEIMANTUS.
The com-
munity of
women and
children.
The saying
' Friends
have all
things in
common '
is an in-
sufficient
solution of
the pro-
blem.
SUCH is the good and true City or State, and the good and steph.
true man is of the same pattern ; and if this is right every ^49
other is wrong ; and the evil is one which affects not only
the ordering of the State, but also the regulation of the
individual soul, and is exhibited in four forms.
What are they ? he said.
I was proceeding to tell the order in which the four evil * |
forms appeared to me to succeed one another, when Pole-
marchus, who was sitting a little way off, just beyond
Adeimantus, began to whisper to him : stretching forth his
hand, he took hold of the upper part of his coat by the
shoulder, and drew him towards him, leaning forward himself
so as to be quite close and saying something in his ear, of
which I only caught the words, ' Shall we let him off, or
what shall we do ? '
Certainly not, said Adeimantus, raising his voice.
Who is it, I said, whom you are refusing to let off?
You, he said.
I repeated \ Why am I especially not to be let off?
Why, he said, we think that you are lazy, and mean to
cheat us out of a whole chapter which is a very important
part of the story ; and you fancy that we shall not notice
your airy way of proceeding ; as if it were self-evident to
everybody, that in the matter of women and children ' friends
have all things in common.'
And was I not right, Adeimantus ?
Yes, he said ; but what is right in this particular case,
like everything else, requires to be explained ; for com-
munity may be of many kinds. Please, therefore, to say
what sort of community you mean. We have been long
1 Reading en iy<a tiirov.
The difficidty of the subject. 141
expecting that you would tell us something about the family Republic
life of your citizens — how they will bring children into the ^'
world, and rear them when they have arrived, and, in SOCRATES,
. . • ADEIMANTUS,
general, what is the nature of this community 01 women and
children — for we are of opinion that the right or wrong
management of such matters will have a great and paramount
influence on the State for good or for evil. And now, since
the question is still undetermined, and you are taking in
hand another State, we have resolved, as you heard, not
450 to let you go until you give an account of all this.
To that resolution, said Glaucon, you may regard me as
saying Agreed.
And without more ado, said Thrasymachus, you may con-
sider us all to be equally agreed.
I said, You know not what you are doing in thus assailing
me : What an argument are you raising about the State !
Just as I thought that I had finished, and was only too glad The
that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how
fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you Socrates.
ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of
what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I
foresaw this gathering trouble, and avoided it.
For what purpose do you conceive that we have come Thegood-
here, said Thrasymachus,— to look for gold, or to hear dis-
course ? chus.
Yes, but discourse should have a limit.
Yes, Socrates, said Glaucon, and the whole of life is the
only limit which wise men assign to the hearing of such
discourses. But never mind about us ; take heart yourself
and answer the question in your own way: What sort of
community of women and children is this which is to prevail
among our guardians ? and how shall we manage the period
between birth and education, which seems to require the
greatest care ? Tell us how these things will be.
Yes, my simple friend, but the answer is the reverse of
easy; many more doubts arise about this than about our
previous conclusions. For the practicability of what is said
may be doubted ; and looked at in another point of view,
whether the scheme, if ever so practicable, would be for the
best, is also doubtful. Hence I feel a reluctance to approach
142 He that kills the truth is a murderer.
Republic the subject, lest our aspiration, my dear friend, should turn
v' out to be a dream only.
Fear not, he replied, for your audience will not be hard
upon you ; they are not sceptical or hostile.
I said : My good friend, I suppose that you mean to
encourage me by these words.
Yes, he said.
A friendly Then let me tell you that you are doing just the reverse ;
fs^ore6 tne encouragement which you offer would have been all very
dangerous weU had I myself believed that I knew what I was talking
tile oneh°S~ about : to declare the truth about matters of high interest
which a man honours and loves among wise men who love
him need occasion no fear or faltering in his mind ; but to
carry on an argument when you are yourself only a hesitating
enquirer, which is my condition, is a dangerous and slippery 451
thing; and the danger is not that I shall be laughed at
(of which the fear would be childish), but that I shall miss the
truth where I have most need to be sure of my footing, and
drag my friends after me in my fall. And I pray Nemesis
not to visit upon me the words which I am going to utter.
For I do indeed believe that to be an involuntary homicide is
a less crime than to be a deceiver about beauty or goodness
or justice in the matter of laws \ And that is a risk which
I would rather run among enemies than among friends, and
therefore you do well to encourage me 2.
Glaucon laughed and said : Well then, Socrates, in case
you and your argument do us any serious injury you shall be
acquitted beforehand of the homicide, and shall not be held
to be a deceiver ; take courage then and speak.
Well, I said, the law says that when a man is acquitted he
is free from guilt, and what holds at law may hold in argument.
Then why should you mind 1
Well, I replied, I suppose that I must retrace my steps and
say what I perhaps ought to have said before in the proper
place. The part of the men has been played out, and now pro-
perly enough comes the turn of the women. Of them I will pro-
ceed to speak, and the more readily since I am invited by you.
1 Or inserting «ai before vo^uv : ' a deceiver about beauty or goodness or
principles of justice or law.'
3 Reading &art e? /*
'Women are but lesser men! 143
For men born and educated like our citizens, the only Republic
way, in my opinion, of arriving at a right conclusion about v-
the possession and use of women and children is to follow SOCRATES.
the path on which we .originally started, when we said
that the men were to be the guardians and watchdogs of
the herd.
True.
Let us further suppose the birth and education of our women
to be subject to similar or nearly similar regulations; then
we shall see whether the result accords with our design.
What do you mean ?
What I mean may be put into the form of a question, I Nodistinc-
said : Are dogs divided into hes and shes, or do they both Jj^11^^
share equally in hunting and in keeping watch and in the such as is
other duties of dogs ? or do we entrust to the males the entire ™ade
and exclusive care of the flocks, while we leave the females at men and
home, under the idea that the bearing and suckling their women,
puppies is labour enough for them ?
No, he said, they share alike ; the only difference between
them is that the males are stronger and the females
weaker.
But can you use different animals for the same purpose,
unless they are bred and fed in the same way ?
You cannot.
Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they
452 must have the same nurture and education ?
Yes.
The education which was assigned to the men was music
and gymnastic.
Yes.
Then women must be taught music and gymnastic and also Women
the art of war, which they must practise like the men ? SITht*
That is the inference, I suppose. music,
I should rather expect, I said, that several of our proposals, gymnastic,
if they are carried out, being unusual, may appear ridiculous. tary e^~,
No doubt of it. cises
Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight
of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men,
especially when they are no longer young; they certainly
will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic
144
The jests of the wits.
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCOX.
Convention
should not
be per-
mitted to
stand in
the way of
a higher
good.
old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness continue to
frequent the gymnasia.
Yes, indeed, he said : according to present notions the
proposal would be thought ridiculous.
But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our
minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be
directed against this sort of innovation ; how they will talk of
women's attainments both in music and gymnastic, and above
all about their wearing armour and riding upon horseback !
Very true, he replied.
Yet having begun we must go forward to the rough places
of the law; at the same time begging of these gentlemen for
once in their life to be serious. Not long ago, as we shall
remind them, the Hellenes were of the opinion, which is still
generally received among the barbarians, that the sight of
a naked man was ridiculous and improper ; and when first
the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians introduced the
custom, the wits of that day might equally have ridiculed the
innovation.
No doubt.
But when experience showed that to. let all things be un-
covered was far better than to cover them up, and the
ludicrous effect to the outward eye vanished before the better
principle which reason asserted, then the man was perceived
to be a fool who directs the shafts of his ridicule at any other
sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh
the beautiful by any other standard but that of the good ].
Very true, he replied.
First, then, whether the question is to be put in jest or in
earnest, let us come to an understanding about the nature of 453
woman : Is she capable of sharing either wholly or partially
in the actions of men, or not at all ? And is the art of war
one of those arts in which she can or can not share ? That
will be the best way of commencing the enquiry, and will
probably lead to the fairest conclusion.
That will be much the best way.
Shall we take the other side first and begin by arguing
against ourselves; in this manner the adversary's position
will not be undefended.
1 Reading with Paris A. KO! KO.KOV . . .
The seeming contradiction of the argument. 145
Why not ? he said. Republic
Then let us put a speech into the mouths of our opponents.
They will say : ' Socrates and Glaucon. no adversary need SoCRATES»
J J J GLAUCON.
convict you, for you yourselves, at the first foundation of the Ob-ection -
State, admitted the principle that everybody was to do the we were
one work suited to his own nature/ And certainly, if I am saying that
not mistaken, such an admission was made by us. ' And do should do
not the natures of men and women differ very much in- his own
deed ? ' And we shall reply : Of course they do. Then we Have not
shall be asked, ' Whether the tasks assigned to men and women and
to women should not be different, and such as are agree- ^as^Jj£
able to their different natures ? ' Certainly they should, of their
' But if so, have you not fallen into a serious inconsistency in own ?
saying that men and women, whose natures are so entirely
different, ought to perform the same actions ? ' — What de-
fence will you make for us, my good Sir, against any one
who offers these objections ?
That is not an easy question to answer when asked
suddenly ; and I shall and I do beg of you to draw out the
case on our side.
These are the objections, Glaucon, and there are many
others of a like kind, which I foresaw long ago ; they made
me afraid and reluctant to take in hand any law about the
possession and nurture of women and children.
By Zeus, he said, the problem to be solved is anything but
easy.
Why yes, I said, but the fact is that when a man is out of
his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming bath
or into mid ocean, he has to swim all the same.
Very true.
And must not we swim and try to reach the shore : we will
hope that Arion's dolphin or some other miraculous help
may save us?
I suppose so, he said.
Well then, let us see if any way of escape can be found.
We acknowledged — did we not ? that different natures ought
to have different pursuits, and that men's and women's
natures are different. And now what are we saying ? — that
different natures ought to have the same pursuits, — this is
the inconsistency which is charged upon us.
146
Is there an essential or only an accidental
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The seem-
ing incon-
sistency
arises out
of a verbal
opposition.
When we
assigned to
different
natures
different
pursuits,
we meant
only those
differences
of nature
which af-
fected the
pursuits.
Precisely.
Verily, Glaucon, I said, glorious is the power of the art of 454
contradiction !
Why do you say so ?
Because I think that many a man falls into the practice
against his will. When he thinks that he is reasoning he is
really disputing, just because he cannot define and divide,
and so know that of which he is speaking ; and he will pursue
a merely verbal opposition in the spirit of contention and not
of fair discussion.
Yes, he replied, such is very often the case ; but what has
that to do with us and our argument ?
A great deal ; for there is certainly a danger of our getting
unintentionally into a verbal opposition.
In what way ?
Why we valiantly and pugnaciously insist upon the verbal
truth, that different natures ought to have different pursuits,
but we never considered at all what was the meaning of same-
ness or difference of nature, or why we distinguished them
when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and
the same to the same natures.
Why, no, he said, that was never considered by us.
I said : Suppose that by way of illustration we were to ask
the question whether there is not an opposition in nature be-
tween bald men and hairy men ; and if this is admitted by us,
then, if bald men are cobblers, we should forbid the hairy
men to be cobblers, and conversely?
That would be a jest, he said.
Yes, I said, a jest; and why? because we never meant
when we constructed the State, that the opposition of natures
should extend to every difference, but only to those differ-
ences which affected the pursuit in which the individual is
engaged ; we should have argued, for example, that a physician
and one who is in mind a physician * may be said to have the
same nature.
True.
Whereas the physician and the carpenter have different
natures ?
Certainly.
1 Reading larpbv JJLGV /col larpiKbv rty i\iv^v Svra.
difference between men and women? 147
And if, I said, the male and female sex appear to differ in Republic
their fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such
pursuit or art ought to be assigned to one or the other of
them ; but if the difference consists only in women bearing
and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof
that a woman differs from a man in respect of the sort of
education she should receive ; and we shall therefore continue
to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have
the same pursuits.
Very true, he said.
Next, we shall ask our opponent how, in reference to any
455 of the pursuits or arts of civic life, the nature of a woman
differs from that of a man ?
That will be quite fair.
And perhaps he, like yourself, will reply that to give a
sufficient answer on the instant is not easy ; but after a little
reflection there is no difficulty.
Yes, perhaps.
Suppose then that we invite him to accompany us in the
argument, and then we may hope to show him that there is
nothing peculiar in the constitution of women which would
affect them in the administration of the State.
By all means.
Let us say to him : Come now, and we will ask you a The same
question : — when you spoke of a nature gifted or not gifted n*tural
in any respect, did you mean to say that one man will found in
acquire a thing easily, another with difficulty; a little both sexes,
learning will lead the one to discover a great deal; whereas arepos-
the other, after much study and application, no sooner learns sessed in
than he forgets ; or again, did you mean, that the one has a de^eeb
body which is a good servant to his mind, while the body of men than
the other is a hindrance to him ?— would not these be the women-
sort of differences which distinguish the man gifted by nature
from the one who is ungifted ?
No one will deny that.
And can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which
the male sex has not all these gifts and qualities in a higher
degree than the female ? Need I waste time in speaking
of the art of weaving, and the management of pancakes and
preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be
L 2
148 The same qualities in men and women.
Republic great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all
things the most absurd ?
sockAtEs, You are quite right, he replied, in maintaining the general
GLAUCON. r i r \
inferiority of the female sex : although many women are in
many things superior to many men, yet on the whole what
you say is true.
And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of
administration in a state which a woman has because she is
a woman, or which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the
gifts of nature are alike diffused in both ; all the pursuits of
men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a
woman is inferior to a man.
Very true.
Men and Then are we to impose all our enactments on men and
are^^e none of them on women ?
governed That will never do.
la^andfo ^ne woman nas a S& of healing, another not ; one is 456
have the a musician, and another has no music in her nature ?
r" Very true.
And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military
exercises, and another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics ?
Certainly.
And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy
of philosophy ; one has spirit, and another is without spirit ?
That is also true.
Then one woman will have the temper of a guardian, and
another not. Was not the selection of the male guardians
determined by differences of this sort ?
Yes.
Men and women alike possess the qualities which make
a guardian ; they differ only in their comparative strength or
weakness.
Obviously.
And those women who have such qualities are to be selected
as the companions and colleagues of men who have similar
qualities and whom they resemble in capacity and in character ?
Very true.
And ought not the same natures to have the same pursuits ?
They ought.
Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural
Then their education should be the same. 149
in assigning music and gymnastic to the wives of the guardians Republ
— to that point we come round again.
c
Certainly not.
The law which we then enacted was agreeable to nature,
and therefore not an impossibility or mere aspiration ; and
the contrary practice, which prevails at present, is in reality
a violation of nature.
That appears to be true.
We had to consider, first, whether our proposals were
possible, and secondly whether they were the most beneficial ?
Yes.
And the possibility has been acknowledged ?
Yes.
The very great benefit has next to be established ?
Quite so.
You will admit that the same education which makes a man There are
a good guardian will make a woman a good guardian ; for Different
... . . degrees of
their original nature is the same ? goodness
Yes koth *n
T ,'..... . . women and
I should like to ask you a question. in men
What is it?
Would you say that all men are equal in excellence, or is
one man better than another ?
The latter.
And in the commonwealth which we were founding do you
conceive the guardians who have been brought up on our
model system to be more perfect men, or the cobblers whose
education has been cobbling ?
What a ridiculous question I
You have answered me, I replied : Well, and may we not
further say that our guardians are the best of our citizens ?
By far the best.
And will not their wives be the best women ?
Yes, by far the best.
And can there be anything better for the interests of the
State than that the men and women of a State should be as
good as possible ?
There can be nothing better.
457 And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when pre-
sent in such manner as we have described, will accomplish ?
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The noble
saying.
The second
and greater
wave.
The first and second waves.
Certainly.
Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in
the highest degree beneficial to the State ?
True.
Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue
will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and
the defence of their country; only in the distribution of
labours the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are
the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to
be the same. And as for the man who laughs at naked
women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in
his laughter he is plucking
1 A fruit of unripe wisdom/
and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what
he is about ; —for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings,
That the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base.
Very true.
Here, then, is one difficulty in our law about women, which
we may say that we have now escaped; the wave has not
swallowed us up alive for enacting that the guardians of
either sex should have all their pursuits in common ; to the
utility and also to the possibility of this arrangement the
consistency of the argument with itself bears witness.
Yes, that was a mighty wave which you have escaped.
Yes, I said, but a greater is coming ; you will not think
much of this when you see the next.
Go on ; let me see.
The law, I said, which is the sequel of this and of all that
has preceded, is to the following effect, — ' that the wives of
our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be
common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any
child his parent.'
Yes, he said, that is a much greater wave than the other ;
and the possibility as well as the utility of such a law are far
more questionable.
I do not think, I said, that there can be any dispute about
the very great utility of having wives and children in common ;
the possibility is quite another matter, and will be very much
disputed.
The day dream. 151
I think that a good many doubts may be raised about both. Republic
You imply that the two questions must be combined, I
replied. Now I meant that you should admit the utility;
and in this way, as I thought, I should escape from one
of them, and then there would remain only the possibility. and
But that little attempt is detected, and therefore you will bility of a
please to give a defence of both. ^ wives"^
Well, I said, I submit to my fate. Yet grant me a little andchii-
458 favour : let me feast my mind with the dream as day dreamers d
are in the habit of feasting themselves when they are walking
alone ; for before they have discovered any means of effecting
their wishes — that is a matter which never troubles them —
they would rather not tire themselves by thinking about
possibilities ; but assuming that what they desire is already
granted to them, they proceed with their plan, and delight in
detailing what they mean to do when their wish has come
true — that is a way which they have of not doing much good
to a capacity which was never good for much. Now I The utility
myself am beginning to lose heart, and I should like, with l? be con"
. . i . - . sidered
your permission, to pass over the question of possibility at first, the
present. Assuming therefore the possibility of the proposal, p°ssibility
T i 11 .11 afterwards.
I shall now proceed to enquire how the rulers will carry out
these arrangements, and I shall demonstrate that our plan, if
executed, will be of the greatest benefit to the State and to the
guardians. First of all, then, if you have no objection, I will
endeavour with your help to consider the advantages of the
measure ; and hereafter the question of possibility.
I have no objection ; proceed.
First, I think that if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to
be worthy of the name which they bear, there must be
willingness to obey in the one and the power of command in
the other ; the guardians must themselves obey the laws, and
they must also imitate the spirit of them in any details which
are entrusted to their care.
That is right, he said.
You, I said, who are their legislator, having selected the The legis-
men, will now select the women and give them to them; — they lator wil1
must be as far as possible of like natures with them ; and guardians
they must live in common houses and meet at common meals. male and
None of them will have anything specially his or her own ;
152
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
meet at
common
meals and
exercises,
and will be
drawn to
one an-
other by
an irresist-
ible neces-
sity.
The breed-
ing of
human
beings, as
of animals,
to be from
the best
and from
those who
are of a
ripe age.
The breeding of animals.
they will be together, and will be brought up together, and
will associate at gymnastic exercises. And so they will
be drawn by a necessity of their natures to have intercourse
with each other— necessity is not too strong a word, I think ?
Yes, he said ; — necessity, not geometrical, but another sort
of necessity which lovers know, and which is far more con-
vincing and constraining to the mass of mankind.
True, I said; and this, Glaucon, like all the rest, must
proceed after an orderly fashion ; in a city of the blessed,
licentiousness is an unholy thing which the rulers will forbid.
Yes, he said, and it ought not to be permitted.
Then clearly the next thing will be to make matrimony
sacred in the highest degree, and what is most beneficial will
be deemed sacred ?
Exactly. 459
And how can marriages be made most beneficial ?— that is
a question which I put to you, because I see in your house
dogs for hunting, and of the nobler sort of birds not a few.
Now, I beseech you, do tell me, have you ever attended
to their pairing and breeding ?
In what particulars ?
Why, in the first place, although they are all of a good
sort, are not some better than others ?
True.
And do you breed from them all indifferently, or do you
take care to breed from the best only ?
From the best.
And do you take the oldest or the youngest, or only those
of ripe age ?
I choose only those of ripe age.
And if care was not taken in the breeding, your dogs and
birds would greatly deteriorate ?
Certainly.
And the same of horses and of animals in general ?
Undoubtedly.
Good heavens ! my dear friend, I said, what consummate
skill will our rulers need if the same principle holds of the
human species !
Certainly, the same principle holds; but why does this
involve any particular skill ?
Hymeneal festivals. 153
Because, I said, our rulers will often have to practise
upon the body corporate with medicines. Now you know
that when patients do not require medicines, but have only
to be put under a regimen, the inferior sort of practitioner 1 1}eg
is deemed to be good enough ; but when medicine has to be « very
given, then the doctor should be more of a man. honest
That is quite true, he said ; but to what are you alluding ?
I mean, I replied, that our rulers will find a considerable
dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their
subjects : we were saying that the use of all these things
regarded as medicines might be of advantage.
And we were very right.
And this lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed
in the regulations of marriages and births.
How so ?
Why, I said, the principle has been already laid down that Arrange-
the best of either sex should be united with the best as often, J^**01"
and the inferior with the inferior, as seldom as possible ; and provement
that they should rear the offspring of the one sort of union, Pf thf
but not of the other, if the flock is to be maintained in
first-rate condition. Now these goings on must be a secret
which the rulers only know, or there will be a further danger
of our herd, as the guardians may be termed, breaking out
into rebellion.
Very true.
Had we not better appoint certain festivals at which we will and for the
bring together the brides and bridegrooms, and sacrifices will
460 be offered and suitable hymeneal songs composed by our tion.
poets : the number of weddings is a matter which must be
left to the discretion of the rulers, whose aim will be to
preserve the average of population ? There are many other
things which they will have to consider, such as the effects -of
wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as
far as this is possible to prevent the State from becoming
either too large or too small.
Certainly, he replied.
We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which Pairing
the less worthy may draw on each occasion of our bringing by lot-
them together, and then they will accuse their own ill-luck
and not the rulers.
154
The marriageable age.
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The brave
deserve the
fair.
What is to
be done
with the
children ?
A woman
to bear
children
from
To be sure, he said.
And I think that our braver and better youth, besides their
other honours and rewards, might have greater facilities
of intercourse with women given them ; their bravery will
be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as
possible.
True.
And the proper officers, whether male or female or both,
for offices are to be held by women as well as by men —
Yes—
The proper officers will take the offspring of the good
parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them
with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter ; but the
offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to
be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown
place, as they should be.
Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians
is to be kept pure.
They will provide for their nurture, and will bring the
mothers to the fold when they are full of milk, taking the
greatest possible care that no mother recognises her own
child; and other wet-nurses may be engaged if more are
required. Care will also be taken that the process of suckling
shall not be protracted too long ; and the mothers will have
no getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand over all
this sort of thing to the nurses and attendants.
You suppose the wives of our guardians to have a fine easy
time of it when they are having children.
Why, said I, and so they ought. Let us, however, proceed
with our scheme. We were saying that the parents should
be in the prime of life ?
Very true.
And what is the prime of life ? May it not be defined as a
period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty
in a man's ?
Which years do you mean to include ?
A woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear
children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty ;
a man may begin at five-and-twenty, when he has passed the
The table of prohibited degrees. 155
point at which the pulse of life beats quickest, and continue Republic
to beget children until he be fifty-five.
461 Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are SOCRATES,
. r u • 1 11 r- a. 11 i • GLAUCON.
the prime of physical as well as of intellectual vigour.
F twenty to
Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part forty . a
in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy man to be-
and unrighteous thing ; the child of which he is the father, if f^f161
it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices twenty-five
very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal to fifty-five-
priestesses and priests and the whole city will offer, that
the new generation may be better and more useful than
their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be
the offspring of darkness and strange lust.
Very true, he replied.
And the same law will apply to any one of those within the
prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in
the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for
we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State,
uncertified and unconsecrated.
Very true, he replied.
This applies, however, only to those who are within the After the
specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, aThas^
except that a man may not marry his daughter or his been
daughter's daughter, or his mother or his mother's mother ; P3556^
and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying licence is
their sons or fathers, or son's son or father's father, and so allowed :
..... A . it i . .but all who
on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying were 5orn
the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo aftercertain
which may come into being from seeing the light; and if f^^^
any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand which their
that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and jj^f^
arrange accordingly. parents
That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how came to~
will they know who are fathers and daughters, and so on ? be kept
They will never know. The way will be this: — dating separate.
from the day of the hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then
married will call all the male children who are born in the
seventh and the tenth month afterwards his sons, and the
female children his daughters, and they will call him father,
and he will call their children his grandchildren, and they
156
Meum and tuum!
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The great-
est good
of States,
unity ; the
greatest
evil, dis-
cord.
The one
the result
of public,
the other
of private
feelings.
will call the elder generation grandfathers and grandmothers.
All who were begotten at the time when their fathers and
mothers came together will be called their brothers and
sisters, and these, as I was saying, will be forbidden to inter-
marry. This, however, is not to be understood as an absolute
prohibition of the marriage of brothers and sisters ; if the lot
favours them, and they receive the sanction of the Pythian
oracle, the law will allow them.
Quite right, he replied.
Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the
guardians of our State are to have their wives and families
in common. And now you would have the argument show
that this community is consistent with the rest of our polity,
and also that nothing can be better — would you not ?
Yes, certainly. 462
Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves
what ought to be the chief aim of the legislator in making
laws and in the organization of a State, — what is the greatest
good, and what is the greatest evil, and then consider whether
our previous description has the stamp of the good or of
the evil ?
By all means.
Can there be any greater evil ;than discord and distraction
and plurality where unity ought to reign ? or any greater
good than the bond of unity ?
There cannot.
And there is unity where there is community of pleasures
and pains — where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the
same occasions of joy and sorrow ?
No doubt.
Yes; and where there is no common but only private
feeling a State is disorganized — when you have one half
of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at
the same events happening to the city or the citizens ?
Certainly.
Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement
about the use of the terms 'mine* and 'not mine/ 'his' and
' not his.'
Exactly so.
And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest
Contrast of the ideal and actual State. 157
number of persons apply the terms ' mine J and ' not mine ' in Republic
the same way to the same thing ?
Quite true. SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Or that again which most nearly approaches to the con- TheState
dition of the individual — as in the body, when but a finger of nke a living
one of us is hurt, the whole frame, drawn towards the soul as beingwhich
a centre and forming one kingdom under the ruling power gether
therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the when hurt
part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in his 1!
finger; and the same expression is used about any other
part of the body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or
of pleasure at the alleviation of suffering.
Very true, he replied ; and I agree with you that in the
best-ordered State there is the nearest approach to this
common feeling which you describe.
Then when any one of the citizens experiences any good
or evil, the whole State will make his case their own, and
will either rejoice or sorrow with him ?
Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered
State.
It will now be time, I said, for us to return to our State Howdif-
and see whether this or some other form is most in ac- Jfrentare
the terms
cordance with these fundamental principles. which are
Very good.
463 Our State like every other has rulers and subjects ? in other
True. States and
All of whom will call one another citizens ?
Of course.
But is there not another name which people give to their
rulers in other States ?
Generally they call them masters, but in democratic States
they simply call them rulers.
And in our State what other name besides that of citizens
do the people give the rulers ?
They are called saviours and helpers, he replied.
And what do the rulers call the people ?
Their maintainers and foster-fathers.
And what do they call them in other States ?
Slaves.
And what do the rulers call one another in other States ?
158
The community of property and of
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The State
one family.
Using the
same
terms, they
will have
the same
modes of
thinking
and acting,
and this
is to be
attributed
mainly to
the com-
munity of
women and
children.
Fellow-rulers.
And what in ours ?
Fellow-guardians.
Did you ever know an example in any other State of a
ruler who would speak of one of his colleagues as his friend
and of another as not being his friend ?
Yes, very often.
And the friend he regards and describes as one in whom
he has an interest, and the other as a stranger in whom he
has no interest ?
Exactly.
But would any of your guardians think or speak of any
other guardian as a stranger ?
Certainly he would not ; for every one whom they meet
will be regarded by them either as a brother or sister, or
father or mother, or son or daughter, or as the child or
parent of those who are thus connected with him.
Capital, I said ; but let me ask you once more : Shall they
be a family in name only; or shall they in all their actions be
true to the name ? For example, in the use of the word
'father/ would the care of a father be implied and the filial
reverence and duty and obedience to him which the law
commands ; and is the violator of these duties to be regarded
as an impious and unrighteous person who is not likely
to receive much good either at the hands of God or of man ?
Are these to be or not to be the strains which the children
will hear repeated in their ears by all the citizens about those
who are intimated to them to be their parents and the rest of
their kinsfolk ?
These, he said, and none other; for what can be more
ridiculous than for them to utter the names of family ties with
the lips only and not to act in the spirit of them ?
Then in our city the language of harmony and concord
will be more often heard than in any other. As I was
describing before, when any one is well or ill, the universal
word will be ' with me it is well ' or 'it is ill.'
Most true. 464
And agreeably to this mode of thinking and speaking,
were we not saying that they will have their pleasures and
pains in common ?
women and children tends to harmony and peace. 159
Yes, and so they will. Republic
And they will have a common interest in the same thing
which they will alike call 'my own/ and having this common
interest they will have a common feeling of pleasure and pain ?
Yes, far more so than in other States.
And the reason of this, over and above the general con-
stitution of the State, will be that the guardians will have
a community of women and children ?
That will be the chief reason.
And this unity of feeling we admitted to be the greatest
good, as was implied in our own comparison of a well-ordered
State to the relation of the body and the members, when
affected by pleasure or pain ?
That we acknowledged, and very rightly.
Then the community of wives and children among our
citizens is clearly the source of the greatest good to the
State ?
Certainly,
And this agrees with the other principle which we were
affirming, — that the guardians were not to have houses or
lands or any other property ; their pay was to be their food,
which they were to receive from the other citizens, and they
were to have no private expenses ; for we intended them to
preserve their true character of guardians.
Right, he replied.
Both the community of property and the community of There will
families, as I am saying, tend to make them more truly J^hSJ!--
guardians ; they will not tear the city in pieces by differing ests among
about 'mine' and 'not mine;' each man dragging any ac- ^^J^d
quisition which he has made into a separate house of his no lawsuits
own, where he has a separate wife and children and private or trials for
pleasures and pains ; but all will be affected as far as may be
by the same pleasures and pains because they are all of one elders-
opinion about what is near and dear to them, and therefore
they all tend towards a common end.
Certainly, he replied.
And as they have nothing but their persons which they can
call their own, suits and complaints will have no existence
among them ; they will be delivered from all those quarrels
of which money or children or relations are the occasion.
160 No lawsuits, no quarrels, no meannesses.
Republic Of course they will.
Neither will trials for assault or insult ever be likely to
occur among them. For that equals should defend them-
selves against equals we shall maintain to be honourable
and right ; we shall make the protection of the person a 465
matter of necessity.
That is good, he said.
Yes ; and there is a further good in the law ; viz. that if a
man has a quarrel with another he will satisfy his resentment
then and there, and not proceed to more dangerous lengths.
Certainly.
To the elder shall be assigned the duty of ruling and
chastising the younger.
Clearly.
Nor can there be a doubt that the younger will not strike
or do any other violence to an elder, unless the magistrates
command him ; nor will he slight him in any way. For
there are two guardians, shame and fear, mighty to prevent
him : shame, which makes men refrain from laying hands on
those who are to them in the relation of parents ; fear, that
the injured one will be succoured by the others who are his
brothers, sons, fathers.
That is true, he replied.
Then in every way the laws will help the citizens to keep
the peace with one another ?
Yes, there will be no want of peace.
From how And as the guardians will never quarrel among themselves
Siis^m^ there w*11 be no danger of the rest of the citJ bein§ divided
our citizens either against them or against one another.
be deliver- None whatever.
ed [
I hardly like even to mention the little meannesses of which
they will be rid, for they are beneath notice : such, for ex-
ample, as the flattery of the rich by the poor, and all the
pains and pangs which men experience in bringing up a
family, and in finding money to buy necessaries for their
household, borrowing and then repudiating, getting how they
can, and giving the money into the hands of women and
slaves to keep — the many evils of so many kinds which
people suffer in this way are mean enough and obvious
enough, and not worth speaking of.
Our citizens more blessed than Olympic victors. 161
Yes, he said, a man has no need of eyes in order to Republic
perceive that.
And from all these evils they will be delivered, and their
life will be blessed as the life of Olympic victors and yet
more blessed.
How so ?
The Olympic victor, I said, is deemed happy in receiving a
part only of the blessedness which is secured to our citizens,
who have won a more glorious victory and have a more
complete maintenance at the public cost. For the victory
which they have won is the salvation of the whole State ;
and the crown with which they and their children are
crowned is the fulness of all that life needs ; they receive
rewards from the hands of their country while living, and
after death have an honourable burial.
Yes, he said, and glorious rewards they are.
Do you remember, I said, how in the course of the previous Answer to
466 discussion J some one who shall be nameless accused us of ^eA°^se
making our guardians unhappy — they had nothing and might mantusthat
have possessed all things — to whom we replied that, if an wemade
_r . . our citizens
occasion offered, we might perhaps hereafter consider this unhappy
question, but that, as at present advised, we would make our for their
guardians truly guardians, and that we were fashioning the
State with a view to the greatest happiness, not of any
particular class, but of the whole ?
Yes, I remember.
And what do you say, now that the life of our protectors is Their life
made out to be far better and nobler than that of Olympic compared
victors — is the life of shoemakers, or any other artisans, or of with that
husbandmen, to be compared with it?
Certainly not. States.
At the same time I ought here to repeat what I have said He who
elsewhere, that if any of our guardians shall try to be happy ^ [^
in such a manner that he will cease to be a guardian, and is a guardian
not content with this safe and harmonious life, which, in our 1S nausht-
judgment, is of all lives the best, but infatuated by some
youthful conceit of happiness which gets up into his head
shall seek to appropriate the whole state to himself, then he
1 Pages 419, 420 ff.
M
162
'Half is more than the whole'
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The com-
mon way
of life in-
cludes
common
education,
common
children,
common
services
and duties
of men and
women.
The chil-
dren to
accompany
their
parents on
military
expedi-
tions ;
will have to learn how wisely Hesiod spoke, when he said,
' half is more than the whole.*
If he were to consult me, I should say to him : Stay where
you are, when you have the offer of such a life.
You agree then, I said, that men and women are to have
a common way of life such as we have described — common
education, common children ; and they are to watch over the
citizens in common whether abiding in the city or going out
to war; they are to keep watch together, and to hunt to-
gether like dogs ; and always and in all things, as far as they
are able, women are to share with the men? And in so
doing they will do what is best, and will not violate, but
preserve the natural relation of the sexes.
I agree with you, he replied.
The enquiry, I said, has yet to be made, whether such a
community will be found possible — as among other animals,
so also among men — and if possible, in what way possible ?
You have anticipated the question which I was about to
suggest.
There is no difficulty, I said, in seeing how war will be
carried on by them.
How?
Why, of course they will go on expeditions together ; and
will take with them any of their children who are strong
enough, that, after the manner of the artisan's child, they
may look on at the work which they will have to do when
they are grown up ; and besides looking on they will have to 467
help and be of use in war, and to wait upon their fathers and
mothers. Did you never observe in the arts how the potters'
boys look on and help, long before they touch the wheel ?
Yes, I have.
And shall potters be more careful in educating their children
and in giving them the opportunity of seeing and practising
their duties than our guardians will be ?
The idea is ridiculous, he said.
There is also the effect on the parents, with whom, as with
other animals, the presence of their young ones will be the
greatest incentive to valour..
That is quite true, Socrates ; and yet if they are defeated,
which may often happen in war, how great the danger is!
The children must see war. 163
the children will be lost as well as their parents, and the Republic
State will never recover.
True, I said ; but would you never allow them to run any risk ? SOCRATES,
I am far from saying that.
Well, but if they are ever to run a risk should they not do
so on some occasion when, if they escape disaster, they will
be the better for it?
Clearly.
Whether the future soldiers do or do not see war in the but care
days of their youth is a very important matter, for the sake U^J^hat
of which some risk may fairly be incurred. they do not
Yes, very important.
This then must be our first step, — to make our children risk.
spectators of war ; but we must also contrive that they shall
be secured against danger ; then all will be well.
True.
Their parents may be supposed not to be blind to the risks
of war, but to know, as far as human foresight can, wjiat
expeditions are safe and what dangerous ?
That may be assumed.
And they will take them on the safe expeditions and be
cautious about the dangerous ones ?
True.
And they will place them under the command of experi-
enced veterans who will be their leaders and teachers ?
Very properly.
Still, the dangers of war cannot be always foreseen ; there
is a good deal of chance about them ?
True.
Then against such chances the children must be at once
furnished with wings, in order that in the hour of need they
may fly away and escape.
What do you mean ? he said.
I mean that we must mount them on horses in their earliest
youth, and when they have learnt to ride, take them on horse-
back to see war : the horses must not be spirited and warlike,
but the most tractable and yet the swiftest that can be had.
In this way they will get an excellent view of what is here-
468 after to be their own business ; and if there is danger they
have only to follow their elder leaders and escape.
M 2
1 64
The rewards and distinctions of heroes.
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The coward
is to be de-
graded into
a lower
rank.
The hero
to receive
honour
from his
comrades
and favour
from his
beloved,
and to have
precedence,
and a larger
share of
meats and
drinks ;
I believe that you are right, he said.
Next, as to war; what are to be the relations of your
soldiers to one another and to their enemies? I should
be inclined to propose that the soldier who leaves his rank or
throws away his arms, or is guilty of any other act of
cowardice, should be degraded into the rank of a husbandman
or artisan. What do you think ?
By all means, I should say.
And he who allows himself to be taken prisoner may as
well be made a present of to his enemies ; he is their lawful
prey, and let them do what they like with him.
Certainly.
But the hero who has distinguished himself, what shall be
done to him? In the first place, he shall receive honour
in the army from his youthful comrades ; every one of them
in succession shall crown him. What do you say ?
I approve.
And what do you say to his receiving the right hand of
fellowship ?
To that too, I agree.
But you will hardly agree to my next proposal.
What is your proposal ?
That he should kiss and be kissed by them.
Most certainly, and I should be disposed to go further, and
say: Let no one whom he has a mind to kiss refuse to be
kissed by him while the expedition lasts. So that if there be
a lover in the army, whether his love be youth or maiden, he
may be more eager to win the prize of valour.
Capital, I said. That the brave man is to have more
wives than others has been already determined : and he is to
have first choices in such matters more than others, in order
that he may have as many children as possible ?
Agreed.
Again, there is another manner in which, according to
Homer, brave youths should be honoured ; for he tells how
Ajax1, after he had distinguished himself in battle, was
rewarded with long chines, which seems to be a compliment
appropriate to a hero in the flower of his age, being not only
a tribute of honour but also a very strengthening thing.
1 Iliad, vii. 321.
'None but the brave deserve the fair! 165
Most true, he said. Republic
Then in this, I said, Homer shall be our teacher; and we v'
too, at sacrifices and on the like occasions, will honour the
brave according to the measure of their valour, whether men
or women, with hymns and those other distinctions which we
were mentioning ; also with
' seats of precedence, and meats and full cups J ; '
and in honouring them, we shall be at the same time training
them.
That, he replied, is excellent.
Yes, I said ; and when a man dies gloriously in war shall
we not say, in the first place, that he is of the golden race ?
To be sure.
Nay, have we not the authority of Hesiod for affirming that also to be
when they are dead -f^
469 ' They are holy angels upon the earth, authors of good, averters
of evil, the guardians of speech-gifted men ' ? a
Yes ; and we accept his authority.
We must learn of the god how we are to order the sepulture
of divine and heroic personages, and what is to be their
special distinction ; and we must do as he bids ?
By all means.
And in ages to come we will reverence them and kneel
before their sepulchres as at the graves of heroes. And
not only they but any who are deemed pre-eminently good,
whether they die from age, or in any other way, shall be
admitted to the same honours.
That is very right, he said.
Next, how shall our soldiers treat their enemies? What Behaviour
about this?
In what respect do you mean ?
First of all, in regard to slavery ? Do you think it right
that Hellenes should enslave Hellenic States, or allow others
to enslave them, if they can help ? Should not their custom
be to spare them, considering the danger which there is that
the whole race may one day fall under the yoke of the
barbarians ?
To spare them is infinitely better.
1 Iliad, viii. 162. 3 Probably Works and Days, 121 foil.
1 66 How shall our soldiers treat their enemies ?
Republic Then no Hellene should be owned by them as a slave;
that is a rule which they will observe and advise the other
Hellenes to observe.
N H 11 Certainly, he said ; they will in this way be united
shall be against the barbarians and will keep their hands off one
made a another.
Next as to the slain; ought the conquerors, I said, to
take anything but their armour? Does not the practice of
despoiling an enemy afford an excuse for not facing the
battle ? Cowards skulk about the dead, pretending that they
are fulfilling a duty, and many an army before now has been
lost from this love of plunder.
Very true.
Those who And is there not illiberality and avarice in robbing a
fall in battle corpse an(j ajso a degree of meanness and womanishness in
are not to
be de- making an enemy of the dead body when the real enemy has
spoiled. flown away and left only his fighting 'gear behind him, — is
not this rather like a dog who cannot get at his assailant,
quarrelling with the stones which strike him instead ?
Very like a dog, he said.
Then we must abstain from spoiling the dead or hindering
their burial ?
Yes, he replied, we most certainly must.
The arms Neither shall we offer up arms at the temples of the gods,
are not to65 ^east °^ a^ tne arms of Hellenes, if we care to maintain good 470
be offered feeling with other Hellenes; and, indeed, we have reason
at temp es , ^Q ^^ ^^ ^^ offering of spoils taken from kinsmen may be
a pollution unless commanded by the god himself?
Very true.
Again, as to the devastation of Hellenic territory or the
burning of houses, what is to be the practice ?
May I have the pleasure, he said, of hearing your opinion ?
Both should be forbidden, in my judgment ; I would take
the annual produce and no more. Shall I tell you why ?
Pray do.
nor Hei- Why, you see, there is a difference in the names ' discord '
lemctem- an(j <war» ancj j imagine that there is also a difference in
tory devas-
tated, their natures; the one is expressive of what is internal
and domestic, the other of what is external and foreign ; and
the first of the two is termed discord, and only the second, war.
Wars of Hellenes with Hellenes and barbarians. 167
That is a very proper distinction, he replied. Republic
And may I not observe with equal propriety that the
Hellenic race is all united together by ties of blood and
friendship, and alien and strange to the barbarians ?
Very good, he said.
And therefore when Hellenes fight with barbarians and
barbarians with Hellenes, they will be described by us as
being at war when they fight, and by nature enemies, and this
kind of antagonism should be called war; but when Hellenes Hellenic
fight with one another we shall say that Hellas is then in ontyTkin
a state of disorder and discord, they being by nature friends ; of discord
and such enmity is to be called discord. ^^ to
I agree. be lasting.
Consider then, I said, when that which we have acknow-
ledged to be discord occurs, and a city is divided, if both
parties destroy the lands and burn the houses of one another,
how wicked does the strife appear! No true lover of his
country would bring himself to tear in pieces his own nurse
and mother: There might be reason in the conqueror
depriving the conquered of their harvest, but still they would
have the idea of peace in their hearts and would not mean to
go on fighting for ever.
Yes, he said, that is a better temper than the other.
And will not the city, which you are founding, be an
Hellenic city?
It ought to be, he replied.
Then will not the citizens be good and civilized ?
Yes, very civilized.
And will they not be lovers of Hellas, and think of Hellas The lover
as their own land, and share in the common temples ? city wiiT"
Most certainly. also be a
And any difference which arises among them will be
471 regarded by them as discord only— a quarrel among friends,
which is not to be called a war ?
Certainly not.
Then they will quarrel as those who intend some day to be
reconciled ?
Certainly.
They will use friendly correction, but will not enslave or
destroy their opponents; they will be correctors, not enemies?
1 68 When will Socrates come to the point f
Republic Just SO.
And as they are Hellenes themselves they will not de-
GLAUCON' vastate Hellas, nor will they burn houses, nor ever suppose
Heiiem tnat tne wnole population of a city— men, women, and chil-
shouid deal dren — are equally their enemies, for they know that the guilt
mildly with of war js alwavs confined to a few persons and that the many
and with' are their friends. And for all these reasons they will be
barbarians unwilling to waste their lands and rase their houses ; their
nowdea"6 enmity to them will only last until the many innocent
with one sufferers have compelled the guilty few to give satisfac-
another. .. o
tion t
I agree, he said, that our citizens should thus deal with
their Hellenic enemies; and with barbarians as the Hellenes
now deal with one another.
Then let us enact this law also for our guardians : — that
they are neither to devastate the lands of Hellenes nor to
burn their houses.
Agreed ; and we may agree also in thinking that these,
like all our previous enactments, are very good.
The com- But still I must say, Socrates, that if you are allowed to
Giaucon &° on *n tn*s wav vou w^ entirely forget the other question
respect- which at the commencement of this discussion you thrust
Station aside :~*s sucn an orc*er °f things possible, and how, if at
of Socrates, all? For I am quite ready to acknowledge that the plan
which you propose, if only feasible, would do all sorts of
good to the State. I will add, what you have omitted, that
your citizens will be the bravest of warriors, and will never
leave their ranks, for they will all know one another, and
each will call the other father, brother, son ; and if you sup-
pose the women to join their armies, whether in the same
rank or in the rear, either as a terror to the enemy, or as
auxiliaries in case of need, I know that they will then be
absolutely invincible ; and there are many domestic ad-
vantages which might also be mentioned and which I also
fully acknowledge : but, as I admit all these advantages and
as many more as you please, if only this State of yours were
to come into existence, we need say no more about them ;
assuming then the existence of the State, let us now turn to
the question of possibility and ways and means — the rest
may be left.
The third and greatest wave. 169
472 If I loiter1 for a moment, you instantly make a raid upon Republic
me, I said, and have no mercy ; I have hardly escaped the V'
first and second waves, and you seem not to be aware that
you are now bringing upon me the third, which is the Socrates
greatest and heaviest. When you have seen and heard the excuses
third wave, I think you will be more considerate and will himselfand
m , makes one
acknowledge that some fear and hesitation was natural re- Or two re-
specting a proposal so extraordinary as that which I have marks pre-
paratory
now to state and investigate. to a finai
The more appeals of this sort which you make, he said, the effort.
more determined are we that you shall tell us how such a
State is possible : speak out and at once.
Let me begin by reminding you that we found our way
hither in the search after justice and injustice.
True, he replied ; but what of that ?
I was only going to ask whether, if we have discovered
them, we are to require that the just man should in nothing
fail of absolute justice ; or may we be satisfied with an ap-
proximation, and the attainment in him of a higher degree of
justice than is to be found in other men ?
The approximation will be enough.
We were enquiring into the nature of absolute justice and
into the character of the perfectly just, and into injustice and
the perfectly unjust, that we might have an ideal. We were
to look at these in order that we might judge of our own (*) The
happiness and unhappiness according to the standard which st^nd^.d
they exhibited and the degree in which we resembled only which
them, but not with any view of showing that they could te'perfectiy
exist in fact. realized ;
True, he said.
Would a painter be any the worse because, after having
delineated with consummate art an ideal of a perfectly beau-
tiful man, he was unable to show that any such man could
ever have existed ?
He would be none the worse.
Well, and were we not creating an ideal of a perfect State?
To be sure.
And is our theory a worse theory because we are unable to
1 Reading ffrpayyfvofji€v<f.
170
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
(2) but is
none the
worse for
this.
though
the ideal
cannot be
realized,
one or two
changes,
or rather
a single
change,
might revo-
lutionize a
State.
Socrates
goes forth
to meet the
wave.
The actual falls short of the ideal.
prove the possibility of a city being ordered in the manner
described ?
Surely not, he replied.
That is the truth, I said. But if, at your request, I am to
try and show how and under what conditions the possibility is
highest, I must ask you, having this in view, to repeat your
former admissions.
What admissions ?
I want to know whether ideals are ever fully realized in 473
language ? Does not the word express more than the fact,
and must not the actual, whatever a man may think, always,
in the nature of things, fall short of the truth ? What do
you say ?
I agree.
Then you must not insist on my proving that the actual
State will in every respect coincide with the ideal : if we are
only able to discover how a city may be governed nearly as
we proposed, you will admit that we have discovered the
possibility which you demand ; and will be contented. I am
sure that I should be contented— will not you ?
Yes, I will.
Let me next endeavour to show what is that fault in States
which is the cause of their present maladministration, and
what is the least change which will enable a State to pass
into the truer form ; and let the change, if possible, be of one
thing only, or, if not, of two ; at any rate, let the changes be
as few and slight as possible.
Certainly, he replied.
I think, I said, that there might be a reform of the State if
only one change were made, which is not a slight or easy
though still a possible one.
What is it ? he said.
Now then, I said, I go to meet that which I liken to the
greatest of the waves; yet shall the word be spoken, even
though the wave break and drown me in laughter and dis-
honour ; and do you mark my words.
Proceed.
I said : Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and
princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy,
and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those
When philosophers are kings. 1 7 1
commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the Republic
other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest
from their evils, — no, nor the human race, as I believe, — and SocRATES>
GLAUCON.
then only will this our State have a possibility of life and ,Cities
behold the light of day. Such was the thought, my dear will never
Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed c^ase ffom
ill until
too extravagant ; for to be convinced that in no other State can they are
there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing. governed
Socrates, what do you mean ? I would have you consider
that the word which you have uttered is one at which
numerous persons, and very respectable persons too, in a What will
474 figure pulling off their coats all in a moment, and seizing
any weapon that comes to hand, will run at you might and
main, before you know where you are, intending to do
heaven knows what; and if you don't prepare an answer, and
put yourself in motion, you will be 'pared by their fine wits,*
and no mistake.
You got me into the scrape, I said.
And I was quite right ; however, I will do all I can to get
you out of it ; but I can only give you good-will and good
advice, and, perhaps, I may be able to fit answers to your
questions better than another — that is all. And now, having
such an auxiliary, you must do your best to show the un-
believers that you are right.
I ought to try, I said, since you offer me such invaluable
assistance. And I think that, if there is to be a chance of But who is
our escaping, we must explain to them whom we mean when a Phijos°-
we say that philosophers are to rule in the State ; then we
shall be able to defend ourselves : There will be discovered
to be some natures who ought to study philosophy and to be
leaders in the State ; and others who are not born to be philo-
sophers, and are meant to be followers rather than leaders.
Then now for a definition, he said.
Follow me, I said, and I hope that I may in &>me way or
other be able to give you a satisfactory explanation.
Proceed.
I dare say that you remember, and therefore I need not Parallel of
remind you, that a lover, if he is worthy of the name, ought the lover-
to show his love, not to some one part of that which he loves,
but to the whole.
172
The definition of a philosopher.
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The lover
of the fair
loves them
all;
the lover
of wines
all wines ;
the lover
of honour
all honour
the philo-
sopher, or
lover of
wisdom, all
knowledge.
I really do not understand, and therefore beg of you to
assist my memory. ^
Another person, I said, might fairly reply as you do ; but a
man of pleasure like yourself ought to know that all who are
in the flower of youth do somehow or other raise a pang or
emotion in a lover's breast, and are thought by him to be
worthy of his affectionate regards. Is not this a way which
you have with the fair : one has a snub nose, and you praise
his charming face ; the hook-nose of another has, you say, a
royal look ; while he who is neither snub nor hooked has the
grace of regularity : the dark visage is manly, the fair are
children of the gods ; and as to the sweet ' honey pale/ as
they are called, what is the very name but the invention of a
lover who talks in diminutives, and is not averse to paleness
if appearing on the cheek of youth ? In a word, there is no
excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will 475
not say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in
the spring-time of youth.
If you make me an authority in matters of love, for the
sake of the argument, I assent.
And what do you say of lovers of wine ? Do you not see
them doing the same? They are glad of any pretext of
drinking any wine.
Very good.
And the same is true of ambitious men ; if they cannot
command an army, they are willing to command a file ; and
if they cannot be honoured by really great and important
persons, they are glad to be honoured by lesser and meaner
people, — but honour of some kind they must have.
Exactly.
Once more let me ask : Does he who desires any class of
goods, desire the whole class or a part only ?
The whole.
And may Ve not say of the philosopher that he is a lover,
not of a part of wisdom only, but of the whole ?
Yes, of the whole.
And he who dislikes learning, especially in youth, when he
has no power of judging what is good and what is not, such
an one we maintain not to be a philosopher or a lover of
knowledge, just as he who refuses his food is not hungry,
The true philosopher and the imitators. 173
and may be said to have a bad appetite and not a good Republic
one?
Very true, he said.
Whereas he who has a taste for every sort of knowledge
and who is curious to learn and is never satisfied, may be
justly termed a philosopher ? Am I not right ?
Glaucon said : If curiosity makes a philosopher, you will Under
find many a strange being will have a title to the name. All
the lovers of sights have a delight in learning, and must are not to
therefore be included. Musical amateurs, too, are a folk be included
strangely out of place among philosophers, for they are the soundSt or
last persons in the world who would come to anything like a under the
philosophical discussion, if they could help, while they run ^^tede
about at the Dionysiac festivals as if they had let out their musical
ears to hear every chorus; whether the performance is in
town or country — that makes no difference — they are there, like.
Now are we to maintain that all these and any who have
similar tastes, as well as the professors of quite minor arts,
are philosophers ?
Certainly not, I replied ; they are only an imitation.
He said : Who then are the true philosophers ?
Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth.
That is also good, he said ; but I should like to know what
you mean ?
To another, I replied, I might have a difficulty in ex-
plaining; but I am sure that you will admit a proposition
which I am about to make.
What is the proposition ?
That since beauty is the opposite of ugliness, they are
two?
Certainly.
476 And inasmuch as they are two, each of them is one ?
True again.
And of just and unjust, good and evil, and of every other
class, the same remark holds : taken singly, each of them is
one ; but from the various combinations of them with actions
and things and with one another) they are seen in all sorts of
lights and appear many ?
Very true.
And this is the distinction which I draw between the sight-
174 Things beautiful and absolute beauty.
Republic loving, art-loving, practical class and those of whom I am
speaking, and who are alone worthy of the name of philo-
SOCRATES, SODherS
How do you distinguish them ? he said.
The lovers of sounds and sights, I replied, are, as I con-
ceive, fond of fine tones and colours and forms and all the
artificial products that are made out of them, but their mind
is incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty.
True, he replied.
Few are they who are able to attain to the sight of this.
Very true.
And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no
sense of absolute beauty, or who, if another lead him to a
knowledge of that beauty is unable to follow — of such an one
I ask, Is he awake or in a dream only? Reflect: is not
the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar
things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object?
I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming.
True know- But take the case of the other, who recognises the existence
abiht ^t * G °^ aks°lute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from
distinguish the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the
between objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of
and many, the objects — is he a dreamer, or is he awake ?
between He is wide awake.
the 'objects ^nd mav we not sav tnat the mind of the one who knows
which par- has knowledge, and that the mind of the other, who opines
take of the 1 Vi * • O
Certainly.
But suppose that the latter should quarrel with us and
dispute our statement, can we administer any soothing
cordial or advice to him, without revealing to him that
there is sad disorder in his wits?
We must certainly offer him some good advice, he replied.
Come, then, and let us think of something to say to him.
Shall we begin by assuring him that he is welcome to any
knowledge which he may have, and that we are rejoiced at his
having it ? But we should like to ask him a question : Does
he who has knowledge know something or nothing ? (You
must answer for him.)
I answer that he knows something.
Being, not being, the intermediate. 1 75
Something that is or is not ? Republic
Something that is ; for how can that which is not ever be V'
known ? SOCRATES,
OLAUCON.
477 And are we assured, after looking at the matter from many There .g an
points of view, that absolute being is or may be absolutely intermedi-
known, but that the utterly non-existent is utterly unknown ? ate between
' *_. being and
Nothing can be more certain. not being>
Good. But if there be anything which is of such' a nature and a cor-
as to be and not to be, that will have a place intermediate j^niedi?
between pure being and the absolute negation of being? ate between
Yes, between them. J—
And, as knowledge corresponded to being and ignorance ledge. This
of necessity to not-being, for that intermediate between being ^e J^1"
and not-being there has to be discovered a corresponding faculty
intermediate between ignorance and knowledge, if there termed
, . ~ opinion.
be such ?
Certainly.
Do we admit the existence of opinion ?
Undoubtedly.
As being the same with knowledge, or another faculty ?
Another faculty.
Then opinion and knowledge have to do with different
kinds of matter corresponding to this difference of faculties ?
Yes.
And knowledge is relative to being and knows being. But
before I proceed further I will make a division.
What division ?
I will begin by placing faculties in a class by themselves :
they are powers in us, and in all other things, by which we
do as we do. Sight and hearing, for example, I should call
faculties. Have I clearly explained the class which I mean ?
Yes, I quite understand.
Then let me tell you my view about them. I do not see
them, and therefore the distinctions of figure, colour, and the
like, which enable me to discern the differences of some
things, do not apply to them. In speaking of a faculty I
think only of its sphere and its result ; and that which has
the same sphere and the same result I call the same faculty,
but that which has another sphere and another result I
call different. Would that be your way of speaking ?
1 76
Republic
V.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Opinion
differs from
knowledge
because the
one errs
and the
other is
unerring.
It also dif-
fers from
ignorance,
which is
concerned
with
nothing.
Knowledge, ignorance, opinion.
Yes.
And will you be so very good as to answer one more
question ? Would you say that knowledge is a faculty, or in
what class would you place it ?
Certainly knowledge is a faculty, and the mightiest of all
faculties.
And is opinion also a faculty ?
Certainly, he said ; for opinion is that with which we are
able to form an opinion.
And yet you were acknowledging a little while ago that
knowledge is not the same as opinion ?
Why, yes, he said : how can any reasonable being ever 478
identify that which is infallible with that which errs ?
An excellent answer, proving, I said, that we are quite
conscious of a distinction between them.
Yes.
Then knowledge and opinion having distinct powers have
also distinct spheres or subject-matters ?
That is certain.
Being is the sphere or subject-matter of knowledge, and
knowledge is to know the nature of being ?
Yes.
And opinion is to have an opinion ?
Yes.
And do we know what we opine ? or is the subject-matter
of opinion the same as the subject-matter of knowledge?
Nay, he replied, that has been already disproven; if
difference in faculty implies difference in the sphere or
subject-matter, and if, as we were saying, opinion and know-
ledge are distinct faculties, then the sphere of knowledge and
of opinion cannot be the same.
Then if being is the subject-matter of knowledge, something
else must be the subject-matter of opinion?
Yes, something else.
Well then, is not-being the subject-matter of opinion ? or,
rather, how can there be an opinion at all about not-being ?
Reflect : when a man has an opinion, has he not an opinion
about something ? Can he have an opinion which is an
opinion about nothing ?
Impossible.
The interval between being and not-being. 177
He who has an opinion has an opinion about some one Republic
thing? v'
Yes. SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
And not-being is not one thing but, properly speaking,
nothing ?
True.
Of not-being, ignorance was assumed to be the necessary
correlative ; of being, knowledge ?
True, he said.
Then opinion is not concerned either with being or with
not-being ?
Not with either.
And can therefore neither be ignorance nor knowledge ?
That seems to be true.
But is opinion to be sought without and beyond either of Its place is
them, in a greater clearness than knowledge, or in a greater not *° be
darkness than ignorance ? , without
In neither. or bey°nd
Then I suppose that opinion appears to you to be darker Or ignor-gS
than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance ? ance- but
Both ; and in no small degree.
And also to be within and between them ?
Yes.
Then you would infer that opinion is intermediate ?
No question.
But were we not saying before, that if anything appeared
to be of a sort which is and is not at the same time, that sort
of thing would appear also to lie in the interval between pure
being and absolute not-being; and that the corresponding
faculty is neither knowledge nor ignorance, but will be found
in the interval between them ?
True.
And in that interval there has now been discovered some-
thing which we call opinion ?
There has.
Then what remains to be discovered is the object which
partakes equally of the nature of being and not-being, and
cannot rightly be termed either, pure and simple; this
unknown term, when discovered, we may truly call the
subject of opinion, and assign each to their proper faculty,—
N
178
The pimning riddle.
Republic
SOCRATES,
Gl^UCON.
Theabso-
lutenessof
tiveness of
the many.
the extremes to the faculties of the extremes and the mean to
the faculty of the mean.
True.
T ls bemg premised, I would ask the gentleman who is of 479
opinion that there is no absolute or unchangeable idea of
Beauty— in whose opinion the beautiful is the manifold— he,
I say, your lover of beautiful sights, who cannot bear to be
J-Q^ fa^t the beautiful is one, and the just is one, or that any-
thing is one — to him I would appeal, saying, Will you be so
very kind, sir, as to tell us whether, of all these beautiful
things, there is one which will not be found ugly ; or of the
just, which will npt be found unjust ; or of the holy, which
will not also be unholy ?
No, he replied ; the beautiful will in some point of view be
found ugly ; and the same is true of the rest.
And may not the many which are doubles be also halves ?
— doubles, that is, of one thing, and halves of another ?
Quite true.
And things great and small, heavy and light, as they are
termed, will not be denoted by these any more than by the
opposite names ?
True; both these and the opposite names will always
attach to all of them.
And can any one of those many things which are called by
particular names be said to be this rather than not to be
this?
He replied : They are like the punning riddles which are
asked at feasts or the children's puzzle about the eunuch
aiming at the bat, with what he hit him, as they say in the
puzzle, and upon what the bat was sitting. The individual
objects of which I am speaking are also a riddle, and have a
double sense : nor can you fix them in your mind, either as
being or not-being, or both, or neither.
Then what will you do with them ? I said. Can they have
a better place than between being and not-being ? For they
are clearly not in greater darkness or negation than not-
being, or more full of light and existence than being.
That is quite true, he said.
Thus then we seem to have discovered that the many ideas
which the multitude entertain about the beautiful and about
The opposition of knowledge and opinion. \ 79
all other things are tossing about in some region which is Reptiblic
half-way between pure being and pure not-being ?
We have. SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Yes ; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind
which we might find was to be described as matter of
opinion, and not as matter of knowledge ; being the inter-
mediate flux which is caught and detained by the interme-
diate faculty.
Quite true.
Then those who see the many beautiful, and who yet Opinion is
neither see absolute beauty, nor can follow any guide who j^^riot
points the way thither; who see the many just, and not ofthe'abso-
absolute justice, and the like, — such persons may be said to
have opinion but not knowledge ?
That is certain.
But those who see the absolute and eternal and immutable
may be said to know, and not to have opinion only ?
Neither can that be denied.
The one love and embrace the subjects of knowledge, the
other those of opinion ? The latter are the same, as I dare
480 say you will remember, who listened to sweet sounds and
gazed upon fair colours, but would not tolerate the existence
of absolute beauty.
Yes, I remember.
Shall we then be guilty of any impropriety in calling them
lovers of opinion rather than lovers of wisdom, and will they
be very angry with us for thus describing them ? »
I shall tell them not to be angry ; no man should be angry
at what is true.
But those who love the truth in each thing are to be called
lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion.
Assuredly.
N 2
BOOK VI.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
If we had
time, we
might have
a nearer
view of the
true and
false philo-
sopher.
Which of
them shall
be our
guardians ?
A question
hardly to
be asked.
AND thus, Glaucon, after the argument has gone a weary steph.
way, the true and the false philosophers have at length ap- 4 4
peared in view.
I do not think, he said, that the way could have been
shortened.
I suppose not, I said ; and yet I believe that we might
have had a better view of both of them if the discussion
could have been confined to this one subject and if there
were not many other questions awaiting us, which he who
desires to see in what respect the life of the just differs from
that of the unjust must consider.
And what is the next question ? he asked.
Surely, I said, the one which follows next in order. In-
asmuch as philosophers only are able to grasp the eternal
and unchangeable, and those who wander in the region of
the many and variable are not philosophers, I must ask you
which of the two classes should be the rulers of our State ?
And how can we rightly answer that question ?
Whichever of the two are best able to guard the laws and
institutions of our State — let them be our guardians.
Very good.
Neither, I said, can there be any question that the guardian
who is to keep anything should have eyes rather than no
eyes?
There can be no question of that.
And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in
the knowledge of the true being of each thing, and who have
in their souls no clear pattern, and are unable as with a
painter's eye to look at the absolute truth and to that original
to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to
order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not
The qualities of the philosophic nature. 181
already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of Republic
them — are not such persons, I ask, simply blind ? VI'
Truly, he replied, they are much in that condition. SOCRATES,
And shall they be our guardians when there are others
who, besides being their equals in experience and falling
short of them in no particular of virtue, also know the very
truth of each thing ?
There can be no reason, he said, for rejecting those who
485 have this greatest of all great qualities ; they must always
have the first place unless they fail in some other respect.
Suppose then, I said, that we determine how far they can
unite this and the other excellences.
By all means.
In the first place, as we began by observing, the nature of The phiio-
the philosopher has to be ascertained. We must come to an ^^of5 a
understanding about him, and, when we have done so, then, truth and
if I am not mistaken, we shall also acknowledge that such an u true
union of qualities is possible, and that those in whom they
are united, and those only, should be rulers in the State.
What do you mean ?
Let us suppose that philosophical minds always love know^
ledge of a sort which shows them the eternal nature not
varying from generation and corruption.
Agreed.
And further, I said, let us agree that they are lovers of all
true being ; there is no part whether greater or less, or more
or less honourable, which they are willing to renounce ; as
we said before of the lover and the man of ambition.
True.
And if they are to be what we were describing, is there
not another quality which they should also possess ? .
What quality ?
Truthfulness : they will never Intentionally receive into
their mind falsehood, which is their detestation, and they will
love the truth.
Yes, that may be safely affirmed of them.
' May be,' my friend, I replied, is not the word ; say rather,
'must be affirmed :' for he whose nature is amorous of any-
thing cannot help loving all that belongs or is akin to the
object of his affections.
182
The spectator of all time and all existence.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
He will be
absorbed in
the plea-
sures of the
soul, and
therefore
temperate
and the re-
verse of
covetous
or mean.
In the mag-
nificence of
his contem-
plations he
will not
think much
of human
life.
Right, he said.
And is there anything more akin to wisdom than truth ?
How can there be ?
Can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and a lover of
falsehood ?
Never.
The true lover of learning then must from his earliest
youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth ?
Assuredly.
But then again, as we know by experience, he whose
desires are strong in one direction will have them weaker in
others; they will be like a stream which has been drawn
off into another channel.
True.
He whose desires are drawn towards knowledge in every
form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and
will hardly feel bodily pleasure — I mean, if he be a true
philosopher and not a sham one.
That is most certain.
Such an one is sure to be temperate and the reverse
of covetous; for the motives which make another man
desirous of having and spending, have no place in his
character.
Very true.
Another criterion of the philosophical nature has also to be 486
considered.
What is that ?
There should be no secret corner of illiberality ; nothing
can be more' antagonistic than meanness to a soul which
is ever longing after the whole of things both divine and
human.
Most true, he replied.
Then how can he who has magnificence of mind and is the
spectator of all time and all existence, think much of human
life?
He cannot.
Or can such an one account death fearful ?
No indeed.
Then the cowardly and mean nature has no part in true
philosophy ?
In idea the philosopher is perfect. 183
Certainly not. Republic
Or again : can he who is harmoniously constituted, who is VI'
not covetous or mean, or a boaster, or a coward — can he, SOCRATES,
1 GLAUCON.
I say, ever be unjust or hard in his dealings ?
Impossible.
Then you will soon observe whether a man is just and He will be
gentle, or rude and unsociable; these are the signs which ^J^e116'
distinguish even in youth the philosophical nature from harmoni-
theunphilosophical. '%£T
True. learning,
There is another point which should be remarked. having a
_ . good me-
What point ? mory and
Whether he has or has not a pleasure in learning: for moving
MI * * . . spontane-
no one will love that which gives him pain, and in which ousiyinthe
after much toil he makes little progress. world of
Certainly not.
And again, if he is forgetful and retains nothing of what he
learns, will he not be an empty vessel ?
That is certain.
Labouring in vain, he must end in hating himself and
his fruitless occupation ?
Yes.
Then a soul which forgets cannot be ranked among genuine
philosophic natures; we must insist that the philosopher
should have a good memory ?
Certainly.
And once more, the inharmonious and unseemly nature can
only tend to disproportion ?
Undoubtedly.
And do you consider truth to be akin to proportion or
to disproportion ?
To proportion.
Then, besides other qualities, we must try to find a naturally
well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spon-
taneously towards the true being of everything.
Certainly.
Well, and do not all these qualities, which we have been
enumerating, go together, and are they not, in a manner,
necessary to a soul, which is to have a full and perfect
participation of being ?
184 In fact, says Adeimantus, he is the reverse of perfect.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON, •
ADEIMANTUS.
Conclu-
sion :
What a
blameless
study then
is philoso-
phy!
Nay, says
Adeiman-
tus, you
can prove
anything,
but your
hearers are
uncon-
vinced all
the same.
Common
opinion
declares
philoso-
phers to
be either
rogues or
useless.
Socrates,
instead of
denying
this state-
ment, ad-
mits the
truth of it.
They are absolutely necessary, he replied. 487
And must not that be a blameless study which he only can
pursue who has the gift of a good memory, and is quick
to learn,— noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage,
temperance, who are his kindred ?
The god of jealousy himself, he said, could find no fault
with such a study.
And to men like him, I said, when perfected by years and
education, and to these only you will entrust the State.
Here Adeimantus interposed and said : To these state-
ments, Socrates, no one can offer a reply ; but when you talk
in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your
hearers: They fancy that they are led astray a little at
each step in the argument, owing to their own want of skill
in asking and answering questions ; these littles accumulate,
and at the end of the discussion they are found to have
sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former notions
appear to be turned upside down. And as unskilful players
of draughts are at last shut up by their more skilful adver-
saries and have no piece to move, so they too find themselves
shut up at last; for they have nothing to say in this new
game of which words are the counters ; and yet all the time
they are in the right. The observation is suggested to me by
what is now occurring. For any one of us might say, that
although in words he is not able to meet you at each step of
the argument, he sees as a fact that the votaries of philosophy,
when they carry on the study, not only in youth as a part of
education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years, most
of them become strange monsters, not to say utter rogues, and
that those who may be considered the best of them are made
useless to the world by the very study which you extol.
Well, and do you think that those who say so are wrong ?
I cannot tell, he replied ; but I should like to know what is
your opinion.
Hear my answer ; I am of opinion that they are quite right.
Then how can you be justified in saying that cities will not
cease from evil until philosophers rule in them, when philoso-
phers are acknowledged by us to be of no use to them ?
You ask a question, I said, to which a reply can only
be given in a parable.
The parable of the ship. 185
Yes, Socrates ; and that is a way of speaking to which you Republic
are not at all accustomed, I suppose. VI'
I perceive, I said, that you are vastly amused at having SOCRATES,
. . . J . J . , & ADEIMANTUS.
plunged me into such a hopeless discussion; but now hear
488 the parable, and then you will be still more amused at the
meagreness of my imagination : for the manner in which the
best men are treated in their own States is so grievous that
no single thing on earth is comparable to it ; and therefore, if
I am to plead their cause, I must have recourse to fiction, and
put together a figure made up of many things, like the
fabulous unions of goats and stags which are found in
pictures. Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is The noble
a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but caPtain
he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and senses are
his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The rather dull
sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering — in Sieir^ '
every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he better
has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who mmfnous16
taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that crew (the
it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any Ift^anfs\P°
one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, and the '
begging and praying him to commit the helm to them ; and if j^°l ^
at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred sopher).
to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and
having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink
or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of
the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and
drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such manner as
might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan
and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out
of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or
persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot,
able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call
a good-for-nothing ; but that the true pilot must pay attention
to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and
whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really
qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and
will be the steerer, whether other people like or not — the
possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has
never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part
1 86 Why is philosophy in such evil repute?
Republic of their calling1. Now in vessels which are in a state of 489
VI' mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true
SOCRATES, pjiot ^e regarded ? Will he not be called by them a prater, a
ADEIMANTUS. r *
star-gazer, a good-for-nothing ?
Of course, said Adeimantus.
The inter- Then you will hardly need, I said, to hear the interpretation
pretation. Q^ ^ figure, which describes the true philosopher in his
relation to the State ; for you understand already.
Certainly.
Then suppose you now take this parable to the gentleman
who is surprised at finding that philosophers have no honour
in their cities ; explain it to him and try to convince him that
their having honour would be far more extraordinary.
I will.
The use- Say to him, that, in deeming the best votaries of philo-
^noso8-01 sophy to be useless to the rest of the world, he is right ; but
phers arises also tell him to attribute their uselessness to the fault of
out of the those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The
ness of pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by
mankind to him— that is not the order of nature ; neither are ' the wise
of them. to go to the doors of the rich ' — the ingenious author of this
saying told a lie — but the truth is, that, when a man is ill,
whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and
he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern.
The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his
subjects to be ruled by him ; although the present governors
of mankind are of a different stamp; they may be justly
compared to the mutinous sailors, and the true helmsmen to
those who are called by them good-for-nothings and star-
gazers.
Precisely so, he said.
The real For these reasons, and among men like these, philosophy,
pwIotTif the noblest Pursuit of all, is not likely to be much esteemed
her profess- by those of the opposite faction ; not that the greatest and
ing follow- most lasting injury is done to her by her opponents, but
by her own professing followers, the same of whom you
1 Or, applying forws 5* Kvfrtpv4i<rei to the mutineers, ' But only understanding
(t-tratovras) that he (the mutinous pilot) must rule in spite of other people,
never considering that there is an art of command which may be practised in
combination with the pilot's art.'
The noble nat^tre of the philosopher. 187
suppose the accuser to say, that the greater number of them Reptiblic
are arrant rogues, and the best are useless ; in which opinion VI'
I agreed. SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Yes.
And the reason why the good are useless has now been
explained ?
True.
Then shall we proceed to show that the corruption of the The cor-
majority is also unavoidable, and that this is not to be laid to
the charge of philosophy any more than the other ? . due to
By all means. many
And let us ask and answer in turn, first going back to the
49° description of the gentle and noble nature. Truth, as you
will remember, was his leader, whom he followed always and
in all things ; failing in this, he was an impostor, and had no
part or lot in true philosophy.
Yes, that was said.
Well, and is not this one quality, to mention no others,
greatly at variance with present notions of him ?
Certainly, he said.
And have we not a right to say in his defence, that the But before
true lover of knowledge is always striving after being— that c°nsiderins
. ,. J . . & , . ,. . r . thls» letus
is his nature; he will not rest in the multiplicity of in- re-enume-
dividuals which is an appearance only, but will go on — the rate ,the
keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force of his desire
abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true nature Pher:
of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the
soul, and by that power drawing near and mingling and
becoming incorporate with very being, having begotten
mind and truth, he will have knowledge and will live and
grow truly, and then, and not till then, will he cease from his
travail.
Nothing, he said, can be more just than such a description
of him.
his love of
And will the love of a lie be any part of a philosopher's essence,
nature ? Will he not utterly hate a lie ? °* fmt?'
TT •* of justice,
He Will. besides his
And when truth is the captain, we cannot suspect any evil other
r i i t 1-11 i i <Z virtues and
of the band which he leads ? natural
Impossible.
1 88 Why do so fern attain to this perfection?
Republic Justice and health of mind will be of the company, and
temperance wjll follow after ?
SOCRATES, True he repliecj.
ADEIMANTUS. . *•
Neither is there any reason why I should again set in array
the philosopher's virtues, as you will doubtless remember
that courage, magnificence, apprehension, memory, were his
natural gifts. And you objected that, although no one could
deny what I then said, still, if you leave words and look at
facts, the persons who are thus described are some of them
manifestly useless, and the greater number utterly depraved ;
we were then led to enquire into the grounds of these ac-
cusations, and have now arrived at the point of asking why
are the majority bad, which question of necessity brought us
back to the examination and definition of the true philo-
sopher.
Exactly.
The rea- And we have next to consider the corruptions of the philo-
S°m Wh h' s°Ph*c nature; why so many are spoiled and so few escape
cai natures spoiling — I am speaking of those who were said to be useless
deteriorate but not wic^ed~an<^» when we have done with them, we will 491
speak of the imitators of philosophy, what manner of men
are they who aspire after a profession which is above them
and of which they are unworthy, and then, by their manifold
inconsistencies, bring upon philosophy, and upon all philo-
sophers, that universal reprobation of which we speak.
What are these corruptions ? he said.
(1) There I will see if I can explain them to you. Every one will
fewofta admit that a nature having in perfection all the qualities
them; which we required in a philosopher, is a rare plant which
is seldom seen among men.
Rare indeed.
And what numberless and powerful causes tend to destroy
these rare natures !
What causes ?
(2) and they In the first place there are their own virtues, their courage,
tracted * " temperance, and the rest of them, every one of which praise-
from philo- worthy qualities (and this is a most singular circumstance)
thrown destroys and distracts from philosophy the soul which is the
virtues ; possessor of them.
That is very singular, he replied.
' Cormptio optimi pessima! 189
Then there are all the ordinary goods of life — beauty, Republic
wealth, strength, rank, and great connections in the State — -
you understand the sort of things — these also have a cor-
rupting and distracting effect.
I understand ; but I should like to know more precisely (3), by the
what you mean about them. °!f 'dsTf
Grasp the truth as a whole, I said, and in the right way ; iife.
you will then have no difficulty in apprehending the preceding
remarks, and they will no longer appear strange to you.
And how am I to do so ? he asked.
Why, I said, we know that all germs or seeds, whether
vegetable or animal, when they fail to meet with proper
nutriment or climate or soil, in proportion to their vigour,
are all the more sensitive to the want of a suitable environ-
ment, for evil is a greater enemy to what is good than to
what is not.
Very true.
There is reason in supposing that the finest natures, when (4) The
under alien conditions, receive more injury than the inferior, t^^ore
because the contrast is greater. liable to
Certainlv injury than
the inferior.
And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted
minds, when they are ill-educated, become pre-eminently bad ?
Do not great crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of
a fulness of nature ruined by education rather than from any
inferiority, whereas weak natures are scarcely capable of any
very great good or very great evil ?
There I think that you are right.
492 And our philosopher follows the same analogy — he is like (5) They
a plant which, having proper nurture, must necessarily grow ^^^°T'
and mature into all virtue, but, if sown and planted in an private
alien soil, becomes the most noxious of all weeds, unless he f°Phlsts-
but com-
be preserved by some divine power. Do you really think, as peiied by
people so often say, that our youth are corrupted by Sophists, the opinion
or that private teachers of the art corrupt them in any degree worid meet-
worth speaking of? Are not the public who say these things ins in the
the greatest of all Sophists? And do they not educate to ^T^ome
perfection young and old, men and women alike, and fashion other place
them after their own hearts ? of resort'
When is this accomplished ? he said.
190
The unequal contest.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
(6) The
other com-
pulsion of
violence
and death.
They must
be saved,
if at all, by
the power
of God.
When they meet together, and the world sits down at an
assembly, or in a court of law, or a theatre, or a camp, or in
any other popular resort, and there is a great uproar, and
they praise some things which are being said or done, and
blame other things, equally exaggerating both, shouting and
clapping their hands, and the echo of the rocks and the place
in which they are assembled redoubles the sound of the
praise or blame — at .such a time will not a young man's
heart, as they say, leap within him ? Will any private train-
ing enable him to stand firm against the overwhelming flood
of popular opinion? or will he be carried away by the
stream ? Will he not have the notions of good and evil
which the public in general have— he will do as they do, and
as they are, such will he be ?
Yes, Socrates ; necessity will compel him.
And yet, I said, there is a still greater necessity, which
has not been mentioned.
What is that ?
The gentle force of attainder or confiscation or death,
which, as you are aware, these new Sophists and educators,
who are the public, apply when their words are powerless.
Indeed they do ; and in right good earnest.
Now what opinion of any other Sophist, or of any private
person, can be expected to overcome in such an unequal
contest ?
None, he replied.
No, indeed, I said, even to make the attempt is a great
piece of folly; there neither is, nor has been, nor is ever
likely to be, any different type of character xwhich has had no
other training in virtue but that which is supplied by public
opinion * — I speak, my friend, of human virtue only ; what is
more than human, as the proverb says, is not included : for I
would not have you ignorant that, in the present evil state of
governments, whatever is saved and comes to good is saved
by the power of God, as we may truly say. 493
I quite assent, he replied.
Then let me crave your assent also to a further observation.
What are you going to say ?
Why, that all those mercenary individuals, whom the many
1 Or, taking iropA in another sense, * trained to virtue on their principles.'
The fatal power of popular opinion. 191
call Sophists and whom they deem to be their adversaries, do, Republic
in fact, teach nothing but the opinion of the many, that is VI-
to say, the opinions of their assemblies ; and this is their SOCRATES,
J) ADEIMANTUS.
wisdom. I might compare them to a man who should study The
the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed brute; his
by him — he would learn how to approach and handle him, behaviour
. , ~ * * . , and temper
also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous (the pe0pie
or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, looked at
and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed
or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when,
by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in '
all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a
system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has
no real notion of what he means by the principles or
passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable
and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust,
all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great
brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast
delights and evil to be that which he dislikes ; and he can
give no other account of them except that the just and
noble are the necessary, having never himself seen, and
having no power of explaining to others the nature of either,
or the difference between them, which is immense. By
heaven, would not such an one be a rare educator?
Indeed he would.
And in what way does he who thinks that wisdom is
the discernment of the tempers and tastes of the motley
multitude, whether in painting or music, or, finally, in politics,
differ from him whom I have been describing ? For when a He who
man consorts with the many, and exhibits to them his poem asspciates
or other work of art or the service which he has done the people will
State, making them his judges Twhen he is not obliged, the conform to
so-called necessity of Diomede will oblige him to produce and will
whatever they praise. And yet the reasons are utterly produce
ludicrous which they give in confirmation of their own ™el^s at
notions about the honourable and good. Did you ever them.
hear any of them which were not?
No, nor am I likely to hear.
You recognise the truth of what I have been saying ? Then
1 Putting a comma after rwv
192
The young 'A Icibiades!
Republic
The youth
who has
bodily and
flattered
from his
childhood,
let me ask you to consider further whether the world will
ever be induced to believe in the existence of absolute beauty
rather than of the many beautiful, or of the absolute in each 494
kind rather than of the many in each kind ?
Certainly not.
Then the world cannot possibly be a philosopher ?
Impossible.
And therefore philosophers must inevitably fall under the
censure of the world ?
They must.
And of individuals who consort with the mob and seek
to please them ?
That is evident.
Then, do you see any way in which the philosopher can
be preserved in his calling to the end ? and remember what
we were saying of him, that he was to have quickness
and memory and courage and magnificence— these were
admitted by us to be the true philosopher's gifts.
Yes.
Will not such an one from his early childhood be in all
things first among all, especially if his bodily endowments are
like his mental ones ?
Certainly, he said.
And his friends and fellow-citizens will want to use him as
he gets older for their own purposes ?
«
and being
Falling at his feet, they will make requests to him and
do him honour and flatter him, because they want to get into
their hands now, the power which he will one day possess.
That often happens, he said.
And what will a man such as he is be likely to do under
such circumstances, especially if he be a citizen of a great
city, rich and noble, and a tall proper youth ? Will he not be
full of boundless aspirations, and fancy himself able to manage
the affairs of Hellenes and of barbarians, and having got such
notions into his head will he not dilate and elevate himself
in the fulness of vain pomp and senseless pride ?
To be sure he will.
Now, when he is in this state of mind, if some one gently
comes to him and tells him that he is a fool and must get
Philosophy the unprotected maiden. 193
understanding, which can only be got by slaving for it, do you Republic
think that, under such adverse circumstances, he will be easily VL
induced to listen ? SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Far otherwise.
reason, will
And even if there be some one who through inherent be easily
goodness or natural reasonableness has had his eyes opened draw*
a little and is humbled and taken captive by philosophy, how phiioso- .
will his friends behave when they think that they are likely to Pi-
lose the advantage which they were hoping to reap from his
companionship ? Will they not do and say anything to
prevent him from yielding to his better nature and to render
his teacher powerless, using to this end private intrigues as
well as public prosecutions ?
495 There can be no doubt of it.
And how can one who is thus circumstanced ever become
a philosopher ?
Impossible.
Then were we not right in saying that even the very The very
qualities which make a man a philosopher may, if he be ill- ^£ies
educated, divert him from philosophy, no less than riches and make a
their accompaniments and the other so-called goods of life ? manaphi-
___ losopher
We were quite right. may also
Thus, my excellent friend, is brought about all that ruin divert him
and failure which I have been describing of the natures best los^phy!
adapted to the best of all pursuits ; they are natures which
we maintain to be rare at any time; this being the class Great na-
out of which come the men who are the authors of the %£^"*?
greatest evil to States and individuals ; and also of the bie, either
greatest good when the tide carries them in that direction ; °^es^
but a small man never was the doer of any great thing either great evil.
to individuals or to States.
That is most true, he said.
And so philosophy is left desolate, with her marriage rite
incomplete : for her own have fallen away and forsaken her,
and while they are leading a false and unbecoming life, other
unworthy persons, seeing that she has no kinsmen to be her
protectors, enter in and dishonour her ; and fasten upon her
the reproaches which, as you say, her reprovers utter, who
affirm of her votaries that some are good for nothing, and
that the greater number deserve the severest punishment.
194
Philosophy in her low estate.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The attrac-
tiveness of
philosophy
to the vul-
gar.
The misal-
liance of
philoso-
Few are
the worthy
disciples :
That is certainly what people say.
Yes ; and what else would you expect, I said, when you
think of the puny creatures who, seeing this land open to
them — a land well stocked with fair names and showy titles —
like prisoners running out of prison into a sanctuary, take
a leap out of their trades into philosophy ; those who do so
being probably the cleverest hands at their own miserable
crafts ? For, although philosophy be in this evil case, still
there remains a dignity about her which is not to be found
in the arts. And many are thus attracted by her whose
natures are imperfect and whose souls are maimed and
disfigured by their meannesses, as their bodies are by their
trades and crafts. Is not this unavoidable ?
Yes.
Are they not exactly like a bald little tinker who has just
got out of durance and come into a fortune ; he takes a bath
and puts on a new coat, and is decked out as a bridegroom
going to marry his master's daughter, who is left poor and
desolate ?
A most exact parallel. 496
What will be the issue of such marriages ? Will they not
be vile and bastard ?
There can be no question of it.
And when persons who are unworthy of education approach
philosophy and make an alliance with her who is in a rank
above them, what sort of ideas and opinions are likely to be
generated? 1Will they not be sophisms captivating to the
ear \ having nothing in them genuine, or worthy of or akin to
true wisdom ?
No doubt, he said.
Then, Adeimaritus, I said, the worthy disciples of philosophy
will be but a small remnant : perchance some noble and well-
educated person, detained by exile in her service, who in the
absence of corrupting influences remains devoted to her ; or
some lofty soul born in a mean city, the politics of which he
contemns and neglects ; and there may be a gifted few who
leave the arts, which they justly despise, and come to her; —
or peradventure there are some who are restrained by our
friend Theages' bridle ; for everything in the life of Th cages
1 Or ' will they not deserve to be called sophisms,' ....
The internal sign of Socrates. 195
conspired to divert him from philosophy ; but ill-health kept Republic
him away from politics. My own case of the internal sign
is hardly worth mentioning, for rarely, if ever, has such a SocRATES»
•' ,_, ADEIMANTUS.
monitor been given to any other man. Those who belong
to this small class have tasted how sweet and blessed a
possession philosophy is, and have also seen enough of the
madness of the multitude ; and they know that no politician
is honest, nor is there any champion of justice at whose side
they may fight and be saved. Such an one may be com- and these
pared to a man who has fallen among wild beasts — he will ^ergs"gtble
not join in the wickedness of his fellows, but neither is he the mad-
able singly to resist all their fierce natures, and therefore nessofthe
seeing that he would be of no use to the State or to his
friends, and reflecting that he would have to throw away his
life without doing any good either to himself or others, he holds
his peace, and goes his own way. He is like one who, in the they there-
storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along, fore m
retires under the shelter of a wall ; and seeing the rest of escape the
mankind full of wickedness, he is content, if only he can live storm take
his own life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and behind a
depart in peace and good-will, with bright hopes. wall and
Yes, he said, and he will have done a great work before he
departs.
A great work — yes; but not the greatest, unless he find
497 a State suitable to him ; for in a State which is suitable
to him, he will have a larger growth and be the saviour of his
country, as well as of himself.
The causes why philosophy is in such an evil name have
now been sufficiently explained : the injustice of the charges
against her has been shown — is there anything more which
you wish to say ?
Nothing more on that subject, he replied ; but I should like
to know which of the governments now existing is in your
opinion the one adapted to her.
Not any of them, I said ; and that is precisely the accusation No existing
which I bring against them — not one of them is worthy
of the philosophic nature, and hence that nature is warped phy.
and estranged ; — as • the exotic seed which is sown in a
foreign land becomes denaturalized, and is wont to be over-
powered and to lose itself in the new soil, even so this growth-
o 2
196
How philosophy is and how it ought to be studied.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Even our
own State
requires the
addition of
the living
authority.
The super-
ficial study
of philoso-
phy which
exists in the
present
day.
of philosophy, instead of persisting, degenerates and receives
another character. But if philosophy ever finds in the State
that perfection which she herself is, then will be seen that she
is in truth divine, and that all other things, whether natures
of men or institutions, are but human ; — and now, I know,
that you are going to ask, What that State is :
No, he said ; there you are wrong, for I was going to ask
another question — whether it is the State of which we are the
founders and inventors, or some other ?
Yes, I replied, ours in most respects ; but you may
remember my saying before, that some living authority would
always be required in the State having the same idea of
the constitution which guided you when as legislator you
were laying down the laws.
That was said, he replied.
Yes, but not in a satisfactory manner ; you frightened us by
interposing objections, which certainly showed that the dis-
cussion would be long and difficult ; and what still remains is
the reverse of easy.
What is there remaining ?
The question how the study of philosophy may be so
ordered as not to be the ruin of the State : All great attempts
are attended with risk ; ' hard is the good/ as men say.
Still, he said, let the point be cleared up, and the enquiry
will then be complete.
I shall not be hindered, I said, by any want of will, but, if
at all, by a want of power : my zeal you may see for your-
selves ; and please to remark in what I am about to say how
boldly and unhesitatingly I declare that States should pursue
philosophy, not as they do now, but in a different spirit.
In what manner ?
At present, I said, the students of philosophy are quite 498
young ; beginning when they are hardly past childhood, they
devote only the time saved from moneymaking and house-
keeping to such pursuits ; and even those of them who are
reputed to have most of the philosophic spirit, when they
come within sight of the great difficulty of the subject, I mean
dialectic, take themselves off. In after life when invited by
some one else, they may, perhaps, go and hear a lecture, and
about this they make much ado, for philosophy is not considered
Philosophy, when truly understood, is loved, not hated. i 97
by them to be their proper business : at last, when they grow Republic
old, in most cases they are extinguished more truly than VI'
Heracleitus' sun, inasmuch as they never light up again1. SOCRATES,
. J ADEJMANTUS.
But what ought to be their course ?
Just the opposite. In childhood and youth their study,
and what philosophy they learn, should be suited to their
tender years : during this period while they are growing up
towards manhood, the chief and special care should be given
to their bodies that they may have them to use in the service
of philosophy; as life advances and the intellect begins to
mature, let them increase the gymnastics of the soul ; but
when the strength of our citizens fails and is past civil and
military duties, then let them range at will and engage in no
serious labour, as we intend them to live happily here, and
to crown this life with a similar happiness in another.
How truly in earnest you are, Socrates ! he said ; I am
sure of that ; and yet most of your hearers, if I am not
mistaken, are likely to be still more earnest in their oppo-
sition to you, and will never be convinced ; Thrasymachus Thrasyma-
leastofall.
Do not make a quarrel, I said, between Thrasymachus and
me, who have recently become friends, although, indeed, we
were never enemies ; for I shall go on striving to the utmost
until I either convert him and other men, or do something
which may profit them against the day when they live again,
and hold the like discourse in another state of existence.
You are speaking of a time which is not very near.
Rather, I replied, of a time which is as nothing in com- The people
parison with eternity. Nevertheless, I do not wonder that hatePhil°-
the many refuse to believe ; for they have never seen that causJthey
of which we are now speaking realized ; they have seen only have onlv
a conventional imitation of philosophy, consisting of words ancTcon-*
artificially brought together, not like these of ours having a yentionai
natural unity. But a human being who in word and work
is perfectly moulded, as far as he can be, into the proportion
and likeness of virtue — such a man ruling in a city which
499 bears the same image, they have never yet seen, neither one
nor many of them — do you think that they ever did ?
1 Heracleitus said that the sun was extinguished every evening and relighted
every morning.
198
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Some-
where, at
some time,
there may
have been
or may be
a philoso-
pher who
is also the
ruler of a
State.
The better mind of the world.
No indeed.
No, my friend, and they have seldom, if ever, heard free
and noble sentiments ; such as men utter when they are
earnestly and by every means in their power seeking after
truth for the sake of knowledge, while they look coldly on
the subtleties of controversy, of which the end is opinion and
strife, whether they meet with them in the courts of law or
in society.
They are strangers, he said, to the words of which you
speak.
And this was what we foresaw, and this was the reason
why truth forced us to admit, not without fear and hesitation,
that neither cities nor States nor individuals will ever attain
perfection until the small class of philosophers whom we
termed useless but not corrupt are providentially compelled,
whether they will or not, to take care of the State, and until
a like necessity be laid on the State to obey them ] ; or until
kings, or if not kings, the sons of kings or princes, are
divinely inspired with a true love of true philosophy. That
either or both of these alternatives are impossible, I see no
reason to affirm : if they were so, we might indeed be justly
ridiculed as dreamers and visionaries. Am I not right ?
Quite right.
If then, in the countless ages of the past, or at the present
hour in some foreign clime which is far away and beyond
our ken, the perfected philosopher is or has been or here-
after shall be compelled by a superior power to have the
charge of the State, we are ready to assert to the death, that
this our constitution has been, and is — yea, and will be
whenever the Muse of Philosophy is queen. There is no
impossibility in all this ; that there is a difficulty, we acknow-
ledge ourselves.
My opinion agrees with yours, he said.
But do you mean to say that this is not the opinion of the
multitude ?
I should imagine not, he replied.
O my friend, I said, do not attack the multitude : they will
change their minds, if, not in an aggressive spirit, but gently
1 Reading /carrj/c^y or
The philosopher has his conversation in heaven. 1 99
and with the view of soothing them and removing' their Republic
dislike of over-education, you show them your philosophers v*'
as they really are and describe as you were just now doing SOCRATES,
, . , f • i . ADEIMANTUS.
500 their character and profession, and then mankind will see
that he of whom you are speaking is not such as they sup-
posed — if they view him in this new light, they will surely
change their notion of him, anc| answer in another strain1.
Who can be at enmity with one who loves them, who that
is himself gentle and free from envy will be jealous of one
in whom there is no jealousy ? Nay, let me answer for you,
that in a few this harsh temper may be found but not in the
majority of mankind.
I quite agree with you, he said.
And do you not also think, as I do, that the harsh feeling The feeling
which the many entertain towards philosophy originates in agamstphi-
J • J losophy is
the pretenders, who rush in uninvited, and are always really a
abusing them, and finding fault with them, who make feelins
persons instead of things the theme of their conversation ? pretended
and nothing can be more unbecoming in philosophers than phiioso-
- . phers who
"US. are always
It is most unbecoming. talking
For he, Adeimantus, whose mind is fixed upon true being, ^^ per
has surely no time to look down upon the affairs of earth, or
to be filled with malice and envy, contending against men ;
his eye is ever directed towards things fixed and immutable, The true
which he sees neither injuring: nor injured by one another, Phllos°-
J J ' pher, who
but all in order moving according to reason ; these he has his eye
imitates, and to these he will, as far as he can, conform him- fixed upon
self. Can a man help imitating that with which he holds principles!
reverential converse ? will fashion
Impossible. £
And the philosopher holding converse with the divine ly image.
order, becomes orderly and divine, as far as the nature of
man allows ; but like every one else, he will suffer from
detraction.
Of course.
1 Reading ij /col &v oSreo QtSavrai without a question, and a\\olav roi : or,
retaining the question and taking a\\olav H6l-av in a new sense : ' Do you mean
to say really that, viewing him in this light, they will be of another mind from
yours, and answer in another strain?*
200
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
He will
begin with
a 'tabula
rasa ' and
there in-
scribe his
laws.
The form and likeness of God.
And if a necessity be laid upon him of fashioning, not only
himself, but human nature generally, whether in States or
individuals, into that which he beholds elsewhere, will he,
think you, be an unskilful artificer of justice, temperance,
and every civil virtue ?
Anything but unskilful.
And if the world perceives that what we are saying about
him is the truth, will they be angry with philosophy ? Will
they disbelieve us, when we tell them that no State can be
happy which is not designed by artists who imitate the
heavenly pattern ?
They will not be angry if they understand, he said. But
how will they draw out the plan of which you are speaking ? 501
They will begin by taking the State and the manners of
men, from which, as from a tablet, they will rub out the
picture, and leave a clean surface. This is no easy task.
But whether easy or not, herein will lie the difference
between them and every other legislator, — they will have
nothing to do either with individual or State, and will in-
scribe no laws, until they have either found, or themselves
made, a clean surface.
They will be very right, he said.
Having effected this, they will proceed to trace an outline
of the constitution ?
No doubt.
And when they are filling in the work, as I conceive, they
will often turn their eyes upwards and downwards : I mean
that they will first look at absolute justice and beauty and
temperance, and again at the human copy ; and will mingle
and temper the various elements of life into the image of a
man; and this they will conceive according to that other
image, which, when existing among men, Homer calls the
form and likeness of God.
Very true, he said.
And one feature they will erase, and another they will put
in, until they have made the ways of men, as far as possible,
agreeable to the ways of God ?
Indeed, he said, in no way could they make a fairer
picture.
And now, I said, are we beginning to persuade those whom
One saviour of a State possible in the course of ages. 201
you described as rushing at us with might and main, that the Republic
painter of constitutions is such an one as we were praising ; VI'
at whom they were so very indignant because to his hands SOCRATES,
J • i- i i ADEIMANTUS.
we committed the State ; and are they growing a little calmer The ^
at what they have just heard ? mies of phi-
Much calmer, if there is any sense in them. losophy,
Why, where can they still find any ground for objection ? hes^ihe*
Will they doubt that the philosopher is a lover of truth and truth, are
. . 0 gradually
bemg? propi-
They would not be so unreasonable. tiated,
Or that his nature, being such as we have delineated, is
akin to the highest good ?
Neither can they doubt this.
But again, will they tell us that such a nature, placed
under favourable circumstances, will not be perfectly good
and wise if any ever was ? Or will they prefer those whom
we have rejected ?
Surely not.
Then will they still be angry at our saying, that, until phi-
losophers bear rule, States and individuals will have no rest ,
from evil, nor will this our imaginary State ever be realized ?
I think that they will be less angry.
Shall we assume that they are not only less angry but and at
502 quite gentle, and that they have been converted and for very
shame, if for no other reason, cannot refuse to come to terms ? gentle.
By all means, he said.
Then let us suppose that the reconciliation has been There may
effected. Will any one deny the other point, that there may ^soTi
be sons of kings or princes who are by nature philosophers ? a king a
Surely no man, he said. Pfos°-
J pher who
And when they have come into being will any one say that has re-
they must of necessity be destroyed ; that they can hardly mained un-
be saved is not denied even by us; but that in the whole andhas^
course of ages no single one of them can escape — who will State obe-
~, , . ~ dient to his
venture to affirm this ? wilu
Who indeed !
But, said I, one is enough ; let there be one man who has
a city obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence
the ideal polity about which the world is so incredulous.
Yes, one is enough.
2O2
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Our consti-
tution then
is not un-
attainable.
Recapitu-
lation.
The second education, lasting through life.
The ruler may impose the laws and institutions which we
have been describing, and the citizens may possibly be willing
to obey them ?
Certainly.
And that others should approve, of what we approve, is no
miracle or impossibility ?
I think not.
But we have sufficiently shown, in what has preceded, that
all this, if only possible, is assuredly for the best.
We have.
And now we say not only that our laws, if they could be
enacted, would be for the best, but also that the enactment of
them, though difficult, is not impossible.
Very good.
And so with pain and toil we have reached the end of one
subject, but more remains to be discussed; — how and by
what studies and pursuits will the saviours of the constitu-
tion be created, and at what ages are they to apply them-
selves to their several studies ?
Certainly.
I omitted the troublesome business of the possession of
women, and the procreation of children, and the appointment
of the rulers, because I knew that the perfect State would be
eyed with jealousy and was difficult of attainment ; but that
piece of cleverness was not of much service to me, for I had
to discuss them all the same. The women and children are
now disposed of, but the other question of the rulers must be
investigated from the very beginning. We were saying, as
you will remember, that they were to be lovers of their
country, tried by the test of pleasures and pains, and neither 503
in hardships, nor in dangers, nor at any other critical moment
were to lose their patriotism — he was to be rejected who
failed, but he who always came forth pure, like gold tried in
the refiner'^ fire, was to be made a ruler, and to receive
honours and rewards in life and after death. This was the
sort of thing which was being said, and then the argument
turned aside and veiled her face ; not liking to stir the
question which has now arisen.
I perfectly remember, he said.
Yes, my friend, I said, and I then shrank from hazarding
The training of the rulers. 203
the bold word ; but now let me dare to say — that the perfect Republic
guardian must be a philosopher.
Yes, he said, let that be affirmed. I^ANTUS
And do not suppose that there will be many of them ; for
the gifts which were deemed by us to be essential rarely ian must be
grow together ; they are mostly found in shreds and patches. a Phllos°-
ITTI i ^ i • i pher, and
What do you mean ? he said. a pniioso-
You are aware, I replied, that quick intelligence, memory, Pher must
sagacity, cleverness, and similar qualities, do not oftei grow Of rare6™
together, and that persons who possess them and are at gifts.
the same time high-spirited and magnanimous are not so The con-
constituted by nature as to live orderly and in a peaceful q^0^/
and settled manner; they are driven any way by their im- solid tem-
pulses, and all solid principle goes out of them. peraments.
Very true, he said.
On the other hand, those steadfast natures which can
better be depended upon, which in a battle are impregnable
to fear and immovable, are equally immovable when there is
anything to be learned ; they are always in a torpid state, and
are apt to yawn and go to sleep over any intellectual toil.
Quite true.
And yet we were saying that both qualities were necessary They must
in those to whom the higher education is to be imparted, and be united-
who are to share in any office or command.
Certainly, he said.
And will they be a class which is rarely found ?
Yes, indeed.
Then the aspirant must not only be tested in those labours He who is
and dangers and pleasures which we mentioned before, but ^^nd
there is another kind of probation which we did not mention must be
— he must be exercised also in many kinds of knowledge, to J^^^
see whether the soul will be able to endure the highest of all, Of know-
504 or will faint under them, as in any other studies and exercises. ledse-
Yes, he said, you are quite right in testing him. But what
do you mean by the highest of all knowledge?
You may remember, I said, that we divided the soul into
three parts ; and distinguished the several natures of justice,
temperance, courage, and wisdom ?
Indeed, he said, if I had forgotten, I should not deserve
to hear more.
2O4 The longer road.
Republic And do you remember the word of caution which preceded
VIt the discussion of them ] ?
SOCRATES, -po what do you refer ?
ADEIMANTUS. •*
We were saying, if I am not mistaken, that he who wanted
The shorter ...
exposition to see them in their perfect beauty must take a longer and
of educa- more circuitous way, at the end of which they would appear :
tion, which , . . . 1111 i • • r i
has been ™\& ^na^ we could add on a popular exposition ol them on a
already level with the discussion which had preceded. And you
adequate, repliea that such an exposition would be enough for you,
and so the enquiry was continued in what to me seemed to
be a very inaccurate manner ; whether you were satisfied or
not, it is for you to say.
Yes, he said, I thought and the others thought that you
gave us a fair measure of truth.
But, my friend, I said, a measure of such things which in
any degree falls short of the whole truth is not fair measure ;
for nothing imperfect is the measure of anything, although
persons are too apt to be contented and think that they
need search no further.
Not an uncommon case when people are indolent.
Yes, I said ; and there cannot be any worse fault in a
guardian of the State and of the laws.
True.
The guard- The guardian then, I said, must be required to take the
take^ne* longer circuit, and toil at learning as well as at gymnastics,
longer road or he will never reach the highest knowledge of all which, as
h!" 'her we were Just now saying> *s h*3 proper calling.
learning, What, he said, is there a knowledge still higher than this
— higher than justice and the other virtues ?
Yes, I said, there is. And of the virtues too we must behold
not the outline merely, as at present — nothing short of the
most finished picture should satisfy us. When little things
are elaborated with an infinity of pains, in order that they
may appear in their full beauty and utmost clearness, how
ridiculous that we should not think the highest truths worthy
of attaining the highest accuracy !
A right noble thought2; but do you suppose that we
1 CP. IV. 435 D.
2 Or, separating K<A ftd\a from tffto?, ' True, he said, and a noble thought ' :
or &£tov rb Stavorjina may be a gloss.
The idea of good. 205
shall refrain from asking you what is this highest know- Republic
ledge ? VL
Nay, I said, ask if you will; but I am certain that you have SocRATES>
Jt J J ADEIMANTUS.
heard the answer many times, and now you either do not
* * which leads
understand me or, as I rather think, you are disposed to be upwards at
505 troublesome; for you have often been told that the idea of }asttothe
good is the highest knowledge, and that all other things good.
become useful and advantageous only by their use of this. f
You can hardly be ignorant that of this I was about to
speak, concerning which, as you have often heard me say,
we know so little ; and, without which, any other knowledge
or possession of any kind will profit us nothing. Do you
think that the possession of all other things is of any value
if we do not possess the good ? or the knowledge of all other
things if we have no knowledge of beauty and goodness ?
Assuredly not.
You are further aware that most people affirm pleasure to But what is
be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge ? ^^f?
* ^S. pleasure,
Arid you are aware too that the latter cannot explain what others
they mean by knowledge, but are obliged after all to say
knowledge of the good ? absurdly
How ridiculous ! • "1
mean
Yes, I said, that they should begin by reproaching us with knowledge
our ignorance of the good, and then presume our knowledge ° l es°° '
of it — for the good they define to be knowledge of the good,
just as if we understood them when they use the term ' good '
- — this is of course ridiculous.
Most true, he said.
And those who make pleasure their good are in equal
perplexity; for they are compelled to admit that there are
bad pleasures as well as good.
Certainly.
And therefore to acknowledge that bad and good are the
same?
True.
There can be no doubt about the numerous difficulties in
which this question is involved.
There can be none.
Further, do we not see that many are willing to do or to
206
The nature of good.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Every man
pursues the
good, but
without ^
knowing
the nature
of it.
The guard-
ian ought
to know
these
things.
have or to seem to be what is just and honourable without
the reality ; but no one is satisfied with the appearance of
good — the reality is what they seek ; in the case of the good,
appearance is despised by every one.
Very true, he said.
Of this then, which every soul of man pursues and makes
the end of all his actions, having a presentiment that there is
such an end, and yet hesitating because neither knowing the
nature nor having the same assurance of this as of other 506
things, and therefore losing whatever good there is in other
things, — of a principle such and so great as this ought the
best men in our State, to whom everything is entrusted, to
be in the darkness of ignorance ?
Certainly not, he said.
I am sure, I said, that he who does not know how the
beautiful and the just are likewise good will be but a sorry
guardian of them ; and I suspect that no one who is ignorant
of the good will have a true knowledge of them.
That, he said, is a shrewd suspicion of yours.
And if we only have a guardian who has this knowledge
our State will be perfectly ordered ?
Of course, he replied ; but I wish that you would tell me
whether you conceive this supreme principle of the good to
be knowledge or pleasure, or different from either ?
Aye, I said, I knew all along that a fastidious gentleman *
like you would not be contented with the thoughts of other
people about these matters.
True, Socrates ; but I must say that one who like you has
passed a lifetime in the study of philosophy should not be
always repeating the opinions of others, and never telling
his own.
Well, but has any one a right to say positively what he
does not know ? »
Not, he said, with the assurance of positive certainty ; he
has no right to do that : but he may say what he thinks, as a
matter of opinion.
And do you not know, I said, that all mere opinions are
bad, and the best of them blind ? You would not deny that
1 Reading av^ip Ka\6s : or reading avfyp KO\US, ' I quite well knew from the
very first, that you, &c.'
Tlie old story of the many and the absolute. 207
those who have any true notion without intelligence are only Republic
like blind men who feel their way along the road ?
Very true.
And do you wish to behold what is blind and crooked and GLAUCON.
base, when others will tell you of brightness and beauty ?
Still, I must implore you, Socrates, said Glaucon, not to
turn away just as you are reaching the goal ; if you will only
give such an explanation of the good as you have already
given of justice and temperance and the other virtues, we
shall be satisfied.
Yes, my friend, and I shall be at least equally satisfied, but We can
I cannot help fearing that I shall fail, and that my indiscreet ^l^™
zeal will bring ridicule upon me. No, sweet sirs, let us not things of
at present ask what is the actual nature of the good, for to ™r"^ h
reach what is now in. my thoughts would be an effort too the things
great for me. But of the child of the good who is likest him, of sense"
I would fain speak, if I could be sure that you wished to ofhtehe°hild
hear — otherwise, not. good.
By all means, he said, tell us about the child, and you shall
remain in our debt for the account of the parent.
507 I do indeed wish, I replied, that I could pay, and you
receive, the account of the parent, and not, as now, of the
offspring only ; take, however, this latter by way of interest \
and at the same time have a care that I do not render a false
account, although I have no intention of deceiving you.
Yes, we will take all the care that we can : proceed.
Yes, I said, but I must first come to an understanding with
you, and remind you of what I have mentioned in the course
of this discussion, and at many other times.
What?
The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many
good, and so of other things which we describe and define ;
to all of them the term ' many ' is applied.
True, he said.
And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and
of other things to which the term ' many ' is applied there is
an absolute ; for they may be brought under a single idea,
which is called the essence of each.
Very true.
1 A play upon rticos, which means both • offspring ' and ' interest.'
208
Sight, the eye, and the sun.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Sight the
most com-
plex of the
senses,
and, unlike
the other
senses, re-
quires the
addition
of a third
nature be-
fore it can
be used.
This third
nature is
light.
The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the
ideas are known but not seen.
Exactly.
And what is the organ with which we see the visible
things ?
The sight, he said.
And with the hearing, I said, we hear, and with the other
senses perceive the other objects of sense ?
True.
But have you remarked that sight is by far the most costly
and complex piece of workmanship which the artificer of the
senses ever contrived ?
No, I never have, he said.
Then reflect : has the ear or voice need of any third or
additional nature in order that the one may be able to hear
and the other to be heard ?
Nothing of the sort.
No, indeed, I replied ; and the same is true of most, if not
all, the other senses — you would not say that any of them
requires such an addition ?
Certainly not.
But you see that without the addition of some other nature
there is no seeing or being seen ?
How do you mean ?
Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has
eyes wanting to see ; colour being also present in them, still
unless there be a third nature specially adapted to the
purpose, the owner of the eyes will see nothing and the
colours will be invisible.
Of what nature are you speaking ?
Of that which you term light, I replied.
True, he said.
Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and 508
visibility, and great beyond other bonds by no small difference
of nature ; for light is their bond, and light is no ignoble
thing?
Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble.
And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say
was the lord of this element ? Whose is that light which
makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear ?
The 'lord of light' is the child of the good. 209
You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say. Republic
May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as VL
follows ? SOCRATES, .
GLAUCON.
How?
Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the
sun?
No.
Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the The eye
sun? likethe
sun, but
By far the most like. not the
And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of samewith
effluence which is dispensed from the sun?
Exactly.
Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is
recognised by sight ?
True, he said.
And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the
good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in
relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the
intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind :
Will you be a little more explicit ? he said.
Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person
directs them towards objects on which the light of day is
no longer shining, but the moon and stars only, see dimly,
and are nearly blind; they seem to have no clearness of
vision in them ?
Very true.
But when they are directed towards objects on which the Visible ob-
sun shines, they see clearly and there is sight in them ? baleen6 10
Certainly. only when
And the soul is like the eye : when resting upon that on *e sun
. • . « , . , shines upon
which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and under- them; truth
stands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned isonl7
towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she when niu-
has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first of minatedby
one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no 6*
intelligence ?
Just so.
Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power
of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the
2io
The analogy of the visible and invisible.
Republic
The idea
of good
truth (the
°^ct^e
subjective).
As the sun
of genera-
tion, so the
being and
essence.
idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science1,
and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of
kn°wledge ; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge,
vou w*^ ^e right in esteeming this other nature as more
beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light 509
anC* S*gnt maV be trU^V Sa^ tO ^e ^G tne SUn' and Vet nOt tO
be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be
deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good
nas a place of honour yet higher.
What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is
the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in
beauty ; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is
the good ?
God forbid, I replied ; but may I ask you to consider the
image in another point of view ?
In what point of view ?
You would say, would you not, that the sun is not only
the author of visibility in all visible things, but of generation
and nourishment and growth, though he himself is not
generation ?
Certainly.
in iike manner the good may be said to be not only the
author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being
and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds
essence in dignity and power.
Glaucon said, with a ludicrous earnestness : By the light of
heaven, how amazing !
Yes, I said, and the exaggeration may be set down to you ;
for you made me utter my fancies.
And pray continue to utter them ; at any rate let us hear if
there is anything more to be said about the similitude of the
sun.
Yes, I said, there is a great deal more.
Then omit nothing, however slight.
I will do my best, I said ; but I should think that a great
deal will have to be omitted.
I hope not, he said.
You have to imagine, then, that there are two ruling
Reading Siavoov.
The subdivisions of them. 2 1 1
powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual Republic
world, the other over the visible. I do not say heaven, lest VI'
you should fancy that I am playing upon the name (ovpavos, SOCRATES,
May I suppose that you have this distinction of the
visible and intelligible fixed in your mind ?
I have.
Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal * The two
parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, gf1^6^^
and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the knowledge
visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare arereprc-
. sented by a
the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of line which
clearness, and you will find that the first section in the jsdivided
5 10 sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images I unequal
mean, in the first place, shadows, and in the second place, parts-
reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies
and the like : Do you understand ?
Yes, I understand.
Imagine, now, the other section, of which this is only the
resemblance, to include the animals which we see, and ever-
thing that grows or is made.
Very good. •
Would you not admit that both the sections of this division
have different degrees of truth, and that the copy is to the
original as the sphere of opinion is to the sphere of knowr
ledge?
Most undoubtedly.
Next proceed to consider the manner in which the sphere
of the intellectual is to be divided.
In what manner ?
Thus : — There are two subdivisions, in the lower of which images
the soul uses the figures given by the former division as
images ; the enquiry can only be hypothetical, and instead of
going upwards to a principle descends to the other end ; in
the higher of the two, the soul passes out of hypotheses, and
goes up to a principle which is above hypotheses, making no
use of images 2 as in the former case, but proceeding only in
and through the ideas themselves.
I do not quite understand your meaning, he said.
1 Reading foura. 2 Reading &virfp iiteivo elictvuv.
P 2
212
The use of hypotheses in either division.
Republic
VI.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The hypo-
theses of
mathema-
tics.
In both
spheres
hypotheses
are used,
in the lower
taking the
form of
images,
but in the
higher the
soul as-
cends
above hy-
potheses to
the idea of
good.
Dialectic
by the help
of hypo-
theses rises
above hy-
potheses.
Then I will try again; you will understand me better
when I have made some preliminary remarks. You are
aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the kindred
sciences assume the odd and the even and the figures and
three kinds of angles and the like in their several branches
of science ; these are their hypotheses, which they and every
body are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign
to give an}' account of them either to themselves or others ;
but they begin with them, and go on until they arrive at last,
and in a consistent manner, at their conclusion ?
Yes, he said, I know.
And do you not know also that although they make use of
the visible forms and reason about them, they are thinking not
of these, but of the ideals which they resemble ; not of the
figures which they draw, but of the absolute square and the
absolute diameter, and so on — the forms which they draw or
make, and which have shadows and reflections in water of
their own, are converted by them into images, but they are
really seeking to behold the things themselves, which can
only be seen with the eye of the mind ?
That is true.
And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible, although in the
jsearch after it the soul is compelled to use hypotheses ; not
ascending to a first principle, because she is unable to rise
above the region of hypothesis, but employing the objects of
which the shadows below are resemblances in their turn as
images, they having in relation to the shadows and re-
flections of them a greater distinctness, and therefore a
higher value.
I understand, he said, that you are speaking of the
province of geometry and the sister arts.
And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible,
you will understand me to speak of that other sort of know-
ledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic,
using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as
hypotheses — that is to say, as steps and points of departure
into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she
may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole ;
and clinging to this and then to that which depends on this,
by successive steps she descends again without the aid of
The four faculties. 213
any sensible object, from ideas, through ideas, and in ideas Republi
she ends.
I understand you, he replied ; not perfectly, for you seem
to me to be describing a task which is really tremendous ;
but, at any rate, I understand you to say that knowledge and
being, which the science of dialectic contemplates, are clearer
than the notions of the arts, as they are termed, which
proceed from hypotheses only: these are also contemplated
by the understanding, and not by the senses : yet, because
they start from hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle,
those who contemplate them appear to you not to exercise
the higher reason upon them, although when a first principle
is added to them they are cognizable by the higher reason.
And the habit which is concerned with geometry and the Return to
cognate sciences I suppose that you would term under- Psych°-
standing and not reason, as being intermediate between
opinion and reason.
You have quite conceived my meaning, I said ; and now, Four fa-
corresponding to these four divisions, let there be four Cities:
... 11-1 Reason,un-
faculties in the soul — reason answering to the highest, derstand-
understanding to the second, faith (or conviction) to the in&> fai!h>
third, and perception of shadows to the last — and let there Of shadows.
be a scale of them, and let us suppose that the several
faculties have clearness in the same degree that their objects
have truth.
I understand, he replied, and give my assent, and accept
your arrangement.
BOOK VII.
Republic AND now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our steph.
nature is enlightened or unenlightened: — Behold! human 5 '4
G^UCO?' keings living in an underground den, which has a mouth
The den °Pen towards the light and reaching all along the den;
the prison- here they have been from their childhood, and have their
the light at ^e&s an(* necks chained so that they cannot move, and
a distance; can only see before them, being prevented by the chains
from turning round their heads. Above and behind them
a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the
prisoners there is a raised way ; and you will see, if you
look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which
marionette players have in front of them, over which they
show the puppets.
I see.
the low And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carry-
th^moving *n& a^ sorts °f vessels, and statues and figures of animals
figures of made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear 515
which the over the wall ? Some of them are taikin& others silent.
shadows
are seen on You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange
the oppo- prisoners.
site wall of _ ., . • * «
the den. Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own
shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire
throws on the opposite wall of the cave ?
True, he said ; how could they see anything but the
shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads ?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner
they would only see the shadows ?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would
they not suppose that they were naming what was actually
before them J ?
1 Reading vap6vra.
The world of shadows and of realities. 215
Very true. Republic
17 ' TT
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which
came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy ^™™*'
when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they The rfson_
heard came from the passing shadow ? ers would
No question, he replied. Sa'dtws^
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the for realities.
shadows of the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if
the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At
first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly
to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look
towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains ; the glare will
distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of
which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and
then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw
before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching
nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real
existence, he has a clearer vision, — what will be his reply ?
And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing And when
to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, J^a^ld
— will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the still persist
shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects "\main-
/ taimngthe
which are now shown to him ? superior
Far truer. truth of the
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he
not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to
take refuge in the objects of vision which he can see, and
which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the
things which are now being shown to him ?
True, he said.
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up When
a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced ^^
into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be they would
516 pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his ^e^^
eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything Of light,
at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the
2 1 6 The prisoners return out of the light into the den.
Republic
VIL
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
At length
they will
see the sun
and under-
stand his
nature*
They would
then pity
their old
compan-
ions of the
den.
upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next
the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and
then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the
light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven ;
and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the
sun or the light of the sun by day ?
Certainly.
Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere
reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his
own proper place, and not in another; and he will con-
template him as he is.
Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives
the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is
in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all
things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to
behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then
reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the
wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not
suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and
pity them ?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among
themselves on those who were quickest to observe the pass-
ing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and
which followed after, and which were together ; and who were
therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do
you think that he would care for such honours and glories,
or envy the possessors of them ? Would he not say with
Homer,
* Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,'
and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and
live after their manner ?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything
than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable
manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly
The interpretation of the parable. 217
out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation ; would he Republic
not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness ?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in
measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never they re-
Si; moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and JJJ^nto
before his eyes had become steady (and the time which they would
would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be see much
very considerable), would he not be ridiculous ? Men would those who
say of him that up he went and down he came without his had never
eyes ; and that it was better not even to think of ascending ;
and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the
light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put
him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear The prison
Glaucon, to the previous argument ; the prison-house is the of t]}e^[orld
world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will the light of
not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards *
to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world
according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have
expressed — whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But,
whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of
knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen
only with an effort ; and, when seen, is also inferred to be
the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent
of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the
immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual;
and that this is the power upon which he who would act
rationally either in public or private life must have his eye
fixed.
I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who
attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to
human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the
upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of
theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Yes, very natural.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from
divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving
218
* The light of the body is the eye.'
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Nothing
extraordi-
nary in the
philoso-
pher being
unable to
see in the
dark.
The eyes
may be
blinded in
two ways,
by excess
or by defect
of light.
The con-
version of
the soul is
the turning
round the
eye from
darkness
to light.
himself in a ridiculous manner ; if, while his eyes are blinking
and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding
darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in
other places, about the images or the shadows of images
of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of
those who have never yet seen absolute justice ?
Anything but surprising, he replied.
Any one who has common sense will remember that the 5*%
bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from
two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going
into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much
as of the. bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he
sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not
be too ready to laugh ; he will first ask whether that soul
of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable
to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned
from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light.
And he will count the one happy in his condition and state
of being, and he will pity the other ; or, if he have a mind
to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light,
there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which
greets him who returns from above out of the light into
the den.
That, he said, is a very just distinction.
But then, if I am right, certain professors of education
must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge
into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind
eyes.
They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity
of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the
eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the
whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by
the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of
becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure
the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or
in other words, of the good. »
Very true.
And must there not be some art which will effect con-
version in the easiest and quickest manner ; not implanting
The duties of those who have seen the light. 219
the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been Republic
turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the VI1'
truth? ^CRATES,
GLAUCON.
Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed. The ^^
. And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem of wisdom
to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not hasadi-
vine Dower
originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and whkh may
exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than anything else con- be turned
... , . , , . , . , . either to-
tams a divine element which always remains, and by this wardsgood
conversion is rendered useful and profitable ; or, on the other or towards
519 hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow
intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue —
how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to
his end ; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eye-sight is
forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in pro-
portion to his cleverness ?
Very true, he said.
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures
in the days of their youth ; and they had been severed from
those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which,
like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and
which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls
upon the things that are below — if, I say, they had been
released from these impediments and turned in the opposite
direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the
truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to
now.
Very likely.
Yes, I said ; and there is another thing which is likely, or Neither
rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that cated^nor1
neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet the over-
those who never make an end of their education, will be able edljcated
will be
ministers of State ; not the former, because they have no good ser-
single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, vants of
. 11 , i. -11 the State.
private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will
not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are
already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.
Very true, he replied.
Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of
the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that
22O
The children of light will descend
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Men should
ascend to
the upper
world, but
they should
also return
to the
lower.
The duties
of philoso-
phers.
Their obli-
gations to
their coun-
try will in-
diice them
to take part
in her go-
vernment.
knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest
of all — they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the
good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we
must not allow them to do as they do now.
What do you mean ?
I mean that they remain in the upper world : but this must
not be allowed ; they must be made to descend again among
the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and
honours, whether they are worth having or not.
But is not this unjust ? he said ; ought we to give them a
worse life, when they might have a better ?
You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention
of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in
the State happy above the rest ; the happiness was to be in
the whole State, and he held the citizens together by per-
suasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State,
and therefore benefactors of one another ; to this end he 520
created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instru-
ments in binding up the State.
True, he said, I had forgotten.
Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in com-
pelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of
others ; we shall explain to them that in other States, men
of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics :
and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet
will, and the government would rather not have them.
Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any
gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But
we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive,
kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have
educated you far better and more perfectly than they have
been educated, and you are better able to share in the double
duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must
go down to the general underground abode, and get the
habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the
habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the in-
habitants of the den, and you will know what the several
images are, and what they represent, because you have seen
the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our
State, which is also yours, will be a reality, and not a dream
and give light to the inhabitants of the den. 2 2 1
only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other Republic
States, in which men fight with one another about shadows v L
only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in SOCRATES,
their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the
State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is
always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in
« which they are most eager, the worst.
Quite true, he replied.
And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take
their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to
spend the greater part of their time with one another in the
heavenly light ?
Impossible, he answered ; for they are just men, and the They will
commands which we impose upon them are just ; there can £e willins
be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern anxious to
necessity, and not after the fashion of our present rulers of rule>
State.
Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You Thestates-
521 must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life ^anmiast
•* be provided
than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered with a
State ; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule better life
, . . . . ., , ij u 1 • d i than that
who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and Of a ruier ;
wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if and fhen
they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and covet office
hungering after their own private advantage, thinking that
hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can
never be ; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil
and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the
rulers themselves and of the whole State.
Most true, he replied.
And the only life which looks down upon the life of political
ambition is that of true rfliilosophy. Do you know of any
other ? g
Indeed, I do not, he said.
And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the
task ? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they
will fight.
No question.
Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians ?
Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of
222
The first and second education.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The train-
ing of the
guardians.
What
knowledge
will draw
the soul
upwards ?
Recapitu-
lation.
The first
education
had two
parts, mu-
sic and
gymnastic.
State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who
at the same time have other honours and another and a
better life than that of politics ?
They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied.
And now shall we consider in what way such guardians
will be produced, and how they are to be brought from
darkness to light, — as some are said to have ascended from
the world below to the gods ?
By all means, he replied.
The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-
shell \ but the turning round of a soul passing from a day
which is little better than night to the true day of being,
that is, the ascent from below2, which we affirm to be true
philosophy ?
Quite so.
And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the
power of effecting such a change ?
Certainly.
What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the
soul from becoming to being? And another consideration
has just occurred to me : You will remember that our young
men are to be warrior athletes ?
Yes, that was said.
Then this new kind of knowledge must have an additional
quality ?
What quality ?
Usefulness in war.
Yes, if possible.
There were two parts in our former scheme of education,
were there not ?
Just so.
There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and
decay of the bodj£ and may therefore be regarded as having
to do with generation and corruption ?
True.
Then that is not the knowledge which we are seeking to 522
discover ?
1 In allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued according as
an oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with the dark or light side
uppermost. 2 Reading
Palamedes in the play. 223
No. Republic
But what do you say of music, what also entered to a
certain extent into our former scheme? '
Music, he said, as you will remember, was the counterpart
of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the influences of
habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm
rhythmical, but not giving them science ; and the words,
whether fabulous or possibly true, had kindred elements of
rhythm and harmony in them. But in music there was
nothing which tended to that good which you are now
seeking.
You are most accurate, I said, in your recollection ; in music
there certainly was nothing of the kind. But what branch of
knowledge is there, my dear Glaucon, which is of the desired
nature ; since all the useful arts were reckoned mean by us ?
Undoubtedly; and yet if music and gymnastic are ex-
cluded, and the arts are also excluded, what remains ?
Well, I said, there may be nothing left of our special
subjects ; and then we shall have to take something which is
not special, but of universal application.
What may that be ?
A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences There re-
use in common, and which every one first has to learn among ^second
the elements of education. education,
What is that? arithmetic;
The little matter of distinguishing one, two, and three — in
a word, number and calculation : — do not all arts and sciences
necessarily partake of them ?
Yes.
Then the art of war partakes of them ?
To be sure.
Then Palamedes, whenever he appears in tragedy, proves
Agamemnon ridiculously unfit to be a general. Did you
never remark how he declares that he had invented number,
and had numbered the ships and set in array the ranks of
the army at Troy ; which implies that they had never been
numbered before, and Agamemnon must be supposed literally
to have been incapable of counting his own feet — how could
he if he was ignorant of number ? And if that is true, what
sort of general must he have been ?
224 The mental training given by Arithmetic.
Republic I should say a very strange one, if this was as you
VIL say.
^an we deny tnat a warri°r should have a knowledge of
arithmetic ?
Certainly he should, if he is to have the smallest under-
standing of military tactics, or indeed, I should rather say,
if he is to be a man at all.
I should like to know whether you have the same notion
which I have of this study ?
What is your notion ?
that being It appears to me to be a study of the kind which we are
a5u1d? seeking, and which leads naturally to reflection, but never to 523
which leads J ' . .
naturally to have been rightly used; for the true use of it is simply
reflection, to draw the soul towards being.
Will you explain your meaning ? he said.
I will try, I said ; and I wish you would share the enquiry
with me, and say 'yes* or 'no* when I attempt to distinguish
in my own mind what branches of knowledge have this
attracting power, in order that we may have clearer proof
that arithmetic is, as I suspect, one of them.
Explain, he said.
reflection is I mean to say that objects of sense are of two kinds ; some
contradict °f ^em do not invite thought because the sense is an ade-
ory impres- quate judge of them ; while in the case of other objects sense
sense °f is so untrustworthy that further enquiry is imperatively de-
manded.
You are clearly referring, he said, to the manner in which
the senses are imposed upon by distance, and by painting in
light and shade.
No, I said, that is not at all my meaning.
Then what is your meaning ?
When speaking of uninviting objects, I mean those which
do not pass from one sensation to the opposite ; inviting
objects are those which do; in this latter case the sense
coming upon the object, whether at a distance or near,
gives no more vivid idea of anything in particular than of
its opposite. An illustration will make my meaning clearer :
— here are three fingers — a little finger, a second finger, and
a middle finger.
Very good.
The Comparison of sensible objects. 225
You may suppose that they are seen quite close : And here Republic
comes the point. v*1'
What is it ? G^CON*'
Each of them equally appears a finger, whether seen in the Nodiffi
middle or at the extremity, whether white or black, or thick cuity in
or thin — it makes no difference : a finger is a finger all the simple per-
, , , /. ception.
same. In these cases a man is not compelled to ask of
thought the question what is a finger? for the sight never
intimates to the mind that a finger is other than a finger.
True.
And therefore, I said, as we might expect, there is nothing
here which invites or excites intelligence.
There is not, he said.
But is this equally true of the greatness and smallness of But the
the fingers? Can sight adequately perceive them? and is no same senses
difference made by the circumstance that one of the fingers time give
is in the middle and another at the extremity ? And in like different
manner does the touch adequately perceive the qualities of ^^which
thickness or thinness, of softness or hardness ? And so of are at first
the other senses ; do they give perfect intimations of such ^idVave to
524 matters ? Is not their mode of operation on this wise — the be distin-'
sense which is concerned with the quality of hardness is f^^n^7
necessarily concerned also with the quality of softness, and
only intimates to the soul that the same thing is felt to be
both hard and soft ?
You are quite right, he said.
And must not the soul be perplexed at this intimation
which the sense gives of a hard which is also soft ? What,
again, is the meaning of light and heavy, if that which is light
is also heavy, and that which is heavy, light ?
Yes, he said, these intimations which the soul receives are
very curious and require to be explained.
Yes, I said, and in these perplexities the soul naturally The aid of
summons to her aid calculation and intelligence, that she may J1^^5^3
see whether the several objects announced to her are one order to
or two. remove the
confusion.
True.
And if they turn out to be two, is not each of them one and
different ?
Certainly.
Q
226
The stimulating power of opposition.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The chaos
then begins
to be de-
fined.
The part-
ing of the
visible and
intelligible.
Thought is
aroused
by the con-
tradiction
of the one
and many.
And if each is one, and both are two, she will conceive the
two as in a state of division, for if they were undivided they
could only be conceived of as one ?
True.
The eye certainly did see both small and great, but only in
a confused manner ; they were not distinguished.
Yes.
Whereas the thinking mind, intending to light up the
chaos, was compelled to reverse the process, and look at
small and great as separate and not confused.
Very true.
Was not this the beginning of the enquiry 'What is
great ? * and ' What is small ? '
Exactly so.
And thus arose the distinction of the visible and the
intelligible.
Most true.
This was what I meant when I spoke of impressions which
invited the intellect, or the reverse — those which are simul-
taneous with opposite impressions, invite thought; those
which are not simultaneous do not.
I understand, he said, and agree with you.
And to which class do unity and number belong ?
I do not know, he replied.
Think a little and you will see that what has preceded
will supply the answer; for if simple unity could be
adequately perceived by the sight or by any other sense,
then, as we were saying in the case of the finger, there would
be nothing to attract towards being ; but when there is some
contradiction always present, and one is the reverse of one
and involves the conception of plurality, then thought begins
to be aroused within us, and the soul perplexed and wanting
to arrive at a decision asks 'What is absolute unity?' This is
the way in which the study of the one has a power of drawing 525
and converting the mind to the contemplation of true being.
And surely, he said, this occurs notably in the case of one ;
for we see the same thing to be both one and infinite in
multitude ?
Yes, I said ; and this being true of one must be equally
true of all number ?
Arithmetic to be the first study of the guardians. 227
Certainly. Republic
And all arithmetic and calculation have to do with number ?
V~c SOCRATES,
Cb- GLAUCON.
And they appear to lead the mind towards truth ?
Yes, in a very remarkable manner.
Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are Arithmetic
seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical ; for ^f^0"
the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not also a phi-
know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, | ^^ al
because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold latter the
of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician. higher.
That is true.
And our guardian is both warrior and philosopher ?
Certainly.
Then this is a kind of knowledge which legislation may
fitly prescribe ; and we must endeavour to persuade those
who are to be the principal men of our State to go and learn
arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study
until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only ; nor
again, like merchants or retail-traders, with a view to buying
or selling, but for the sake of their military use, and of the
soul herself; and because this will be the easiest way for
her to pass from becoming to truth and being.
That is excellent, he said.
Yes, I said, and now having spoken of it, I must add
how charming the science is ! and in how many ways it
conduces to our desired end, if pursued in the spirit of a
philosopher, and not of a shopkeeper !
How do you mean ?
I mean, as I was saying, that arithmetic has a very great The higher
and elevating effect^ compelling the soul to reason about f^o™61
abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of cerned,
visible or tangible objects into the argument. You know n.ot.Yith
how steadily the masters of the art repel and ridicule any tangible
one who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is calcu- °^°^ but
lating, and if you divide, they multiply \ taking care that one stract num-
shall continue one and not become lost in fractions. bers-
1 Meaning either (i) that they integrate the number because they deny the
possibility of fractions ; or (2) that division is regarded by them as a process of
multiplication, for the fractions of one continue to be units.
Q2
228
Order of Studies, i) Arithmetic, 2) Geometry.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The arith-
metician is
naturally
quick, and
the study of
arithmetic
gives him
still greater
quickness.
Geometry
has practi-
cal appli-
cations ;
That is very true.
Now, suppose a person were to say to them : O my 526
friends, what are these wonderful numbers about which you
are reasoning, in which, as you say, there is a unity such as
you demand, and each unit is equal, invariable, indivisible,—
what would they answer ?
They would answer, as I should conceive, that they were
speaking of those numbers which can only be realized in
thought.
Then you see that this knowledge may be truly called
necessary, necessitating as it clearly does the use of the pure
intelligence in the attainment of pure truth ?
Yes ; that is a marked characteristic of it.
And have you further observed, that those who have a
natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every
other kind of knowledge ; and even the dull, if they have
had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no
other advantage from it, always become much quicker than
they would otherwise have been.
Very true, he said.
And indeed, you will not easily find a more difficult study,
and not many as difficult.
You will not.
And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of know-
ledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which
must not be given up.
I agree.
Let this then be made one of our subjects of education.
And next, shall we enquire whether the kindred science also
concerns us ?
You mean geometry ? v
Exactly so.
Clearly, he said, we are concerned with that part of
geometry which relates to war; for in pitching a camp, or
taking up a position, or closing or extending the lines of an
army, or any other military manoeuvre, whether in actual
battle or on a march, it will make all the difference whether
a general is or is not a geometrician.
Yes, I said, but for that purpose a very little of either
geometry or calculation will be enough ; the question relates .
The advantages of the study of geometry. 229
rather to the greater and more advanced part of geometry — Republic
whether that tends in any degree to make more easy the
vision of the idea of good ; and thither, as I was saying, all
things tend which compel the soul to turn her gaze towards these how_
that place, where is the full perfection of being, which she ever are
ought, by all means, to behold. «»on
True, he said. with that
Then if geometry compels us to view being, it concerns us : g^ter
... .• part of the
if becoming only, it does not concern us ? science
527 Yes, that is what we assert. which tends
Yet anybody who has the least acquaintance with geometry ™
will not deny that such a conception of the science is in flat
contradiction to the ordinary language of geometricians.
How so ?
They have in view practice only, and are always speaking,
in a narrow and ridiculous manner, of squaring and extend-
ing and applying and the like — they confuse the necessities
of geometry with those of daily life ; whereas knowledge is
the real object of the whole science.
Certainly, he said.
Then must not a further admission be made ?
What admission ?
That the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge and is con-
of the eternal, and not of aught perishing and transient. cerned with
That, he replied, may be readily allowed, and is true.
Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul to-
wards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up
that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.
Nothing will be more likely to have such an effect.
Then nothing should be more sternly laid down than that
the inhabitants of your fair city should by all means learn
geometry. Moreover the science has indirect effects, which
are not small.
Of what kind ? he said.
There are the military advantages of which you spoke, I
said ; and in all departments of knowledge, as experience
proves, any one who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker
of apprehension than one who has not.
Yes indeed, he said, there is an infinite difference between
them.
230 Solid geometry should precede 3) solids in motion.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Astrono-
my, like the
previous
sciences,
is at first
praised by
Glaucon
for its prac-
tical uses.
Correction
of the
order.
Then shall we propose this as a second branch of know-
ledge which our youth will study ?
Let us do so, he replied.
And suppose we make astronomy the third — what do you
say?
I am strongly inclined to it, he said ; the observation of
the seasons and of months and years is as essential to the
general as it is to the fanner or sailor.
I am amused, I said, at your fear of the world, which
makes you guard against the appearance of insisting upon
useless studies ; and I quite admit the difficulty of believing
that in every man there is an eye of the soul which, when by
other pursuits lost and dimmed, is by these purified and
re-illumined ; and is more precious far than ten thousand
bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen. Now there are two
classes of persons : one class of those who will agree with
you and will take your words as a revelation ; another class
to whom they will be utterly unmeaning, and who will natur- 528
ally deem them to be idle tales, for they see no sort of profit
which is to be obtained from them. And therefore you
had better decide at once with which of the two you are
proposing to argue. You will very likely say with neither,
and that your chief aim in carrying on the argument is your
own improvement ; at the same time you do not grudge to
others any benefit which they may receive.
I think that I should prefer to carry on the argument
mainly on my own behalf.
Then take a step backward, for we have gone wrong in the
order of the sciences.
What was the mistake ? he said.
After plane geometry, I said, we proceeded at once to
solids in revolution, instead of taking solids in themselves ;
whereas after the second dimension the third, which is con-
cerned with cubes and dimensions of depth, ought to have
followed.
That is true, Socrates ; but so little seems to be known as
yet about these subjects.
Why, yes, I said, and for two reasons : — in the first place,
no government patronises them ; this leads to a want of
energy in the pursuit of them, and they are difficult ; in the
' If the government wo^Ud only take it up.J 231
second place, students cannot learn them unless they have a Republic
director. But then a director can hardly be found, and even VI1'
if he could, as matters now stand, the students, who are very SocRATES>
conceited, would not attend to him. That, however, would
be otherwise if the whole State became the director of these able con-
studies and gave honour to them ; then disciples would want dit|on of
to come, and there would be continuous and earnest search, geometry.
and discoveries would be made ; since even now, disregarded
as they are by the world, and maimed of their fair propor-
tions, and although none of their votaries can tell the use of
them, still these studies force their way by their natural
charm, and very likely, if they had the help of the State, they
would some day emerge into light.
Yes, he said, there is a remarkable charm in them. But I
do not clearly understand the change in the order. First
you began with a geometry of plane surfaces ?
Yes, I said.
And you placed astronomy next, and then you made a step
backward ?
Yes, and I have delayed you by my hurry; the ludicrous The motion
state of solid geometry, which, in natural order, should have ofsollds-
followed, made me pass over this branch and go on to
astronomy, or motion of solids.
True, he said.
Then assuming that the science now omitted would come
into existence if encouraged by the State, let us go on to
astronomy, which will be fourth.
The right order, he replied. And now, Socrates, as you Giaucon
rebuked the vulgar manner in which I praised astronomy |^^t^n"
529 before, my praise shall be given in your own spirit. For about as-
every one, as I think, must see that astronomy compels tronomy-
the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to
another.
Every one but myself, I said ; to every one else this may
be clear, but not to me.
And what then would you say ?
I should rather say that those who elevate astronomy
into philosophy appear to me to make us look downwards
and not upwards.
What do you mean ? he asked.
232
4) Astronomy one form of the motion of solids :
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
He is re-
buked by
Socrates,
who ex-
plains that
the higher
astronomy
is an ab-
stract sci-
ence.
You, I replied, have in your mind a truly sublime con-
ception of our knowledge of the things above. And I dare
say that if a person were to throw his head back and study
the fretted ceiling, you would still think that his mind was
the percipient, and not his eyes. And you are very likely
right, and I may be a simpleton : but, in my opinion, that
knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can
make the soul look upwards, and whether a man gapes at
the heavens or blinks on the ground, seeking to learn some
particular of sense, I would deny that he can learn, for
nothing of that sort is matter of science ; his soul is looking
downwards, not upwards, whether his way to knowledge is by
water or by land, whether he floats, or only lies on his back.
I acknowledge, he said, the justice of your rebuke. Still,
I should like to ascertain how astronomy can be learned in
any manner more conducive to that knowledge of which we
are speaking?
I will tell you, I said : The starry , heaven which we
behold is wrought upon a visible ground, and therefore,
although the fairest and most perfect of visible things,
must necessarily be deemed inferior far to the true motions
of absolute swiftness and absolute slowness, which are
relative to each other, and carry with them that which is
contained in them, in the true number and in every true
figure. Now, these are to be apprehended by reason and
intelligence, but not by sight.
True, he replied.
The spangled heavens should be used as a pattern and
with a view to that higher knowledge ; their beauty is like
the beauty of figures or pictures excellently wrought by
the hand of Daedalus, or some other great artist, which
we may chance to behold ; any geometrician who saw them
would appreciate the exquisiteness of their workmanship,
but he would never dream of thinking that in them he could
find the true equal or the true double, or the truth of any
other proportion.
No, he replied, such an idea would be ridiculous.
And will not a true astronomer have the same feeling when
he looks at the movements of the stars ? Will he not think
that heaven and the things in heaven are framed by the
530
5) Har monies ) another form. 233
Creator of them in the most perfect manner ? But he will Republic
never imagine that the proportions of night and day, or of
both to the month, or of the month to the year, or of the SOCRATES,
7 . GLAUCON.
stars to these and to one another, and any other things that
are material and visible can also be eternal and subject to
no deviation — that v/ould be absurd ; and it is equally absurd
to take so much pains in investigating their exact truth.
I quite agree, though I never thought of this before.
Then, I said, in astronomy, as in geometry, we should The real
employ problems, and let the heavens alone if we would ^J^e
approach the subject in the right way and so make the nomyor
natural gift of reason to be of any real use. geometry
That, he said, is a work infinitely beyond our present attained by
astronomers. the use of
Yes, I said ; and there are many other things which must tjons>'
also have a similar extension given to them, if our legislation
is to be of any value. But can you tell me of any other
suitable study ?
No, he said, not without thinking.
Motion, I said, has many forms, and not one only ; two of
them are obvious enough even to wits no better than ours ;
and there are others, as I imagine, which may be left to
wiser persons.
But where are the two ?
There is a second, I said, which is the counterpart of the
one already named.
And what may that be ?
The second, I said, would seem relatively to the ears to be What as-
what the first is to the eyes ; for I conceive that as the eyes tronomy is
are designed to look up at the stars, so are the ears to hear harmonics
harmonious motions ; and these are sister sciences — as the a^ to the
Pythagoreans say, and we, Glaucon, agree with them ?
Yes, he replied.
But this, I said, is a laborious study, and therefore we
had better go and learn of them; and they will tell us
whether there are any other applications of these sciences.
At the same time, we must not lose sight of our own higher
object.
What is that ?
There is a perfection which all knowledge ought to reach,
ear.
234
Harmonics: empirical, Pythagorean, ideal.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
They must
be studied
with a view
to the good
and not
after the
fashion of
the empi-
rics or even
of the Py-
thagoreans.
All these
studies
must be
correlated
with one
another.
and which our pupils ought also to attain, and not to fall
short of, as I was saying that they did in astronomy. For
in the science of harmony, as you probably know, the same 531
thing happens. The teachers of harmony compare the
sounds and consonances which are heard only, and their
labour, like that of the astronomers, is in vain.
Yes, by heaven ! he said ; and 'tis as good as a play to
hear them talking about their condensed notes, as they
call them ; they put their ears close alongside of the strings
like persons catching a sound from their neighbour's wall '—
one set of them declaring that they distinguish an inter-
mediate note and have found the least interval which should
be the unit of measurement ; the others insisting that the two
sounds have passed into the same — either party setting their
ears before their understanding.
You mean, I said, those gentlemen who tease and torture
the strings and rack them on the pegs of the instrument :
I might carry on the metaphor and speak after their manner
of the blows which the plectrum gives, and make accusations
against the strings, both of backwardness and forwardness to
sound ; but this would be tedious, and therefore I will only
say that these are not the men, and that I am referring to the
Pythagoreans, of whom I was just now proposing to enquire
about harmony. For they too are in error, like the astro-
nomers ; they investigate the numbers of the harmonies which
are heard, but they never attain to problems— that is to say,
they never reach the natural harmonies of number, or reflect
why some numbers are harmonious and others not.
That, he said, is a thing of more than mortal knowledge.
A thing, I replied, which I would rather call useful ; that is,
if sought after with a view to the beautiful and good ; but if
pursued in any other spirit, useless.
Very true, he said.
Now, when all these studies reach the point of inter-
communion and connection with one another, and come to be
considered in their mutual affinities, then, I think, but not
till then, will the pursuit of them have a value for our objects ;
otherwise there is no profit in them.
1 Or, ' close alongside of their neighbour's instruments, as if to catch a sound
from them.'
The revelation of dialectic. 235
I suspect so; but you are speaking, Socrates, of a vast Republic
work. VIL
What do you mean ? I said ; the prelude or what ? Do
you not know that all this is but the prelude to the actual
strain which we have to learn? For you surely would
not regard the skilled mathematician as a dialectician ?
Assuredly not, he said ; I have hardly ever known a Want of
mathematician who was capable of reasoning. ' ower inf
But do you imagine that men who are unable to give mathema-
532 and take a reason will have the knowledge which we require ticians-
of them ?
Neither can this be supposed.
And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn Dialectic
of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, ^reas^n
but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found only, with-
to imitate ; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined °ut aiy
by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, sense.
and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic;
when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute
by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of
sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives
at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds him-
self at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of
sight at the end of the visible.
Exactly, he said.
Then this is the' progress which you call dialectic ?
True.
But the release of the prisoners from chains, and their Thegra-
translation from the shadows to the images and to the light, dual ac~
&. ' quirement
and the ascent from the underground den to the sun, while of dialectic
in his presence they are vainly trying to look on animals and bythePur-
plants and the light of the sun, but are able to perceive even arts antid-
with their weak eyes the images * in the water [which are Pated in
divine], and are the shadows of true existence (not shadows of
images cast by a light of fire, which compared with the sun is
only an image) — this power of elevating the highest principle
in the soul to the contemplation of that which is best in
existence, with which we may compare the raising of that
1 Omitting evravda 5e irpbs <pa.vra.ff^.a.ra. The word 0€?o is bracketed by
Stallbaum.
2.16
Dialectic alone ascends to a first principle.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The nature
of dialectic
can only be
revealed to
those who
have been
students of
the preli-
minary sci-
ences,
faculty which is the very light of the body to the sight of that
which is brightest in the material and visible world — this
power is given, as I was saying, by all that study and pursuit
of the arts which has been described.
I agree in what you are saying, he replied, which may be
hard to believe, yet, from another point of view, is harder still
to deny. This however is not a theme to be treated of in
passing only, but will have to be discussed again and again.
And so, whether our conclusion be true or false, let us assume
all this, and proceed at once from the prelude or preamble
to the chief strain \ and describe that in like manner. Say,
then, what is the nature and what are the divisions of
dialectic, and what are the paths which lead thither; for
these paths will also lead to our final rest.
Dear Glaucon, I said, you will not be able to follow me 533
here, though I would do my best, and you should behold not an
image only but the absolute truth, according to my notion.
Whether what I told you would or would not have been a
reality I cannot venture to say ; but you would have seen
something like reality ; of that I am confident.
Doubtless, he replied.
But I must also remind you, that the power of dialectic
alone can reveal this, and only to one who is a disciple of the
previous sciences.
Of that assertion you may be as confident as of the last.
And assuredly no one will argue that there is any other
method of comprehending by any regular process all true
existence or of ascertaining what each thing is in its own
nature; for the arts in general are concerned with the
desires or opinions of men, or are cultivated with a view to
production and construction, or for the preservation of such
productions and constructions; and as to the mathematical
sciences which, as we were saying, have some apprehension
of true being— geometry and the like — they only dream about
being, but never can they behold the waking reality so long
as they leave the hypotheses which they use unexamined, and
are unable to give an account of them. For when a man
knows not his own first principle, and when the conclusion
1 A play upon the word vfaos, which means both ' law ' and ' strain.'
1 Why should we dispiite about names?' 237
and intermediate steps are also constructed out of he knows Republic
not what, how can he imagine that such a fabric of con- VIL
vention can ever become science ? SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Impossible, he said.
Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first which are
principle and is the only science which does away with jJJidT"
hypotheses in order to make her ground secure ; the eye of
the soul, which is literally buried in an outlandish slough, is
by her gentle aid lifted upwards ; and she uses as handmaids
and helpers in the work of conversion, the sciences which
we have been discussing. Custom terms them sciences, but
they ought to have some other name, implying greater clear-
ness than opinion and less clearness than science : and this,
in our previous sketch, was called understanding. But why
should we dispute about names when we have realities of
such importance to consider ?
Why indeed, he said, when any name will do which ex-
presses the thought of the mind with clearness ?
At any rate, we are satisfied, as before, to have four Two divi-
divisions ; two for intellect and two for opinion, and to call Slon^ of th.e
' mind, mtel-
the first division science, the second understanding, the lectand
third belief, and the fourth perception of shadows, opinion °Pinion'
each having
>34 being concerned with becoming, and intellect with being ; and two sub-
so to make a proportion :— divisions.
As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion.
And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief, and under-
standing to the perception of shadows.
But let us defer the further correlation and subdivision of
the subjects of opinion and of intellect, for it will be a long
enquiry, many times longer than this has been.
As far as I understand, he said, I agree.
And do you also agree, I said, in describing the dialectician
as one who attains a conception of the essence of each thing ?
And he who does not possess and is therefore unable to
impart this conception, in whatever degree he fails, may
in that degree also be said to fail in intelligence ? Will you
admit so much ?
Yes, he said ; how can I deny it ?
And you would say the same of the conception of the good ?
Until the person is able to abstract and define rationally the
238
Dialectic the coping-stone.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
No truth
which does
not rest on
the idea of
good
ought to
have a high
place.
The na-
tural gifts
which are
required in
the dialect-
ician : a
towardly
under-
standing ;
a good
memory ;
idea of good, and unless he can run the gauntlet of all
objections, and is ready to disprove them, not by appeals
to opinion, but to absolute truth, never faltering at any step
of the argument — unless he can do all this, you would say
that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other
good ; J?e apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which
is given by opinion and not by science ; — dreaming and
slumbering in this life, before he is well awake here, he
arrives at the world below, and has his final quietus.
In all that I should most certainly agree with you.
And surely you would not have the children of your ideal
State, whom you are nurturing and educating — if the ideal
ever becomes a reality — you would not allow the future
rulers to be like posts1, having no reason in them, and yet
to be set in authority over the highest matters ?
Certainly not.
Then you will make a law that they shall have such an
education as will enable them to attain .the greatest skill in
asking and answering questions ?
Yes, he said, you and I together will make it.
Dialectic, then, as you will agree, is the coping-stone of the
sciences, and is set over them ; no other science can be placed
higher — the nature of knowledge can no further go ?
I agree, he said.
But to whom we are to assign these studies, and in what 535
way they are to be assigned, are questions which remain to
be considered.
Yes, clearly.
You remember, I said, how the rulers were chosen before?
Certainly, he said.
The same natures must still be chosen, and the preference
again given to the surest and the bravest, and, if possible,
to the fairest ; and, having noble and generous tempers,
they should also have the natural gifts which will facilitate
their education.
And what are these ?
Such gifts as keenness and ready powers of acquisition ;
for the mind more often faints from the severity of study
literally ' lines,' probably the starting-point of a race-course.
The natural and acquired qualities of the dialectician. 239
than from the severity of gymnastics : the toil is more en- Republic
tirely the mind's own, and is not shared with the body. *'
Very true, he replied. SOCRATES,
Further, he of whom we are in search should have a good stren h" f
memory, and be an unwearied solid man who is a lover of character ;
labour in any line ; or he will never be able to endure the
great amount of bodily exercise and to go through all the
intellectual discipline and study which we require of him.
Certainly, he said ; he must have natural gifts.
The mistake at present is, that those who study philosophy
have no vocation, and this, as I was before saying, is the
reason why she has fallen into disrepute : her true sons
should take her by the hand and not bastards.
What do you mean ?
In the first place, her votary should not have a lame or industry;
halting industry — I mean, that he should not be half in-
dustrious and half idle : as, for example, when a man is a
lover of gymnastic and hunting, and all other bodily exer-
cises, but a hater rather than a lover of the labour of learning
or listening or enquiring. Or the occupation to which he
devotes himself may be of an opposite kind, and he may
have the other sort of lameness.
Certainly, he said.
And as to truth, I said, is not a soul equally to be deemed love of
halt and lame which hates voluntary falsehood and is ex- *
tremely indignant at herself and others when they tell lies,
but is patient of involuntary falsehood, and does not mind
wallowing like a swinish beast in the mire of ignorance, and
has no shame at being detected ?
To be sure.
36 And, again, in respect of temperance, courage, magnifi- the moral
cence, and every other virtue, should we not carefully *
distinguish between the true son and the bastard ? for
where there is no discernment of such qualities states and
individuals unconsciously err ; and the state makes a ruler,
and the individual a friend, of one who, being defective in
some part of virtue, is in a figure lame or a bastard.
That is very true, he said.
All these things, then, will have to be carefully considered
by us ; and if only those whom we introduce to this vast
240
The training of the dialectician.
Republic
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Socrates
plays a
little with
himself and
his sub-
ject.
For the
study of
dialectic
the young
must be
selected.
The pre-
liminary
studies
should
be com-
menced in
childhood,
but never
forced.
system of education and training are sound in body and mind,
justice herself will have nothing to say against us, and we
shall be the saviours of the constitution and of the State ;
but, if our pupils are men of another stamp, the reverse
will happen, and we shall pour a still greater flood of
ridicule on philosophy than she has to endure at present.
That would not be creditable.
Certainly not, I said ; and yet perhaps, in thus turning
jest into earnest I am equally ridiculous.
In what respect ?
I had forgotten, I said, that we were not serious, and
spoke with too much excitement. For when I saw philo-
sophy so undeservedly trampled under foot of men I could
not help feeling a sort of indignation at the authors of her
disgrace : and my anger made me too vehement.
Indeed ! I was listening, and did not think so.
But I, who am the speaker, felt that I was. And now let
me remind you that, although in our former selection we
chose old men, we must not do so in this. Solon was under
a delusion when he said that a man when he grows old may
learn many things — for he can no more learn much than
he can run much ; youth is the time for any extraordinary
toil.
Of course.
And, therefore, calculation and geometry and all the other
elements of instruction, which are a preparation for dialectic,
should be presented to the mind in childhood ; not, however,
under any notion of forcing our system of education.
Why not ?
Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acqui-
sition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when
compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge
which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on
the mind.
Very true.
Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but
let early education be a sort of amusement ; you will then be 537
better able to find out the natural bent.
That is a very rational notion, he said.
Do you remember that the children, too, were to be taken
The order of the higher education. 241
to see the battle on horseback ; and that if there were no Republic
danger they were to be brought close up and, like young
hounds, have a taste of blood given them ?
Yes, I remember.
The same practice may be followed, I said, in all these
things — labours, lessons, dangers — and he who is most at
home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select number.
At what age?
At the age when the necessary gymnastics are over : the The neces-
period whether of two or three years which passes in this sary .^m"
sort of training is useless for any other purpose ; for sleep must be
and exercise are unpropitious to learning; and the trial J£™pleted
of who is first in gymnastic exercises is one of the most
important tests to which our youth are subjected.
Certainly, he replied.
After that time those who are selected from the class of At twenty
twenty years old will be promoted to higher honour, and the yegr^hgfdis
sciences which they learned without any order in their early cipies will
education will now be brought together, and they will be begin to be
able to see the natural relationship of them to one another correlation
and to true being. of the sci-
Yes, he said, that is the only kind of knowledge which
takes lasting root.
Yes, I said ; and the capacity for such knowledge is the
great criterion of dialectical talent : the comprehensive mind
is always the dialectical.
I agree with you, he said.
These, I said, are the points which you must consider; At thirty
and those who have most of this comprehension, and who the most
. . . . M. promising
are most steadfast in their learning, and in their military will be
and other appointed duties, when they have arrived at the placed in a
age of thirty will have to be chosen by you out of the
select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will
have to prove them by the help of dialectic, in order to
learn which of them is able to give up the use of sight and
the other senses, and in company with truth to attain absolute
being : And here, my friend, great caution is required.
Why great caution ? The growth
Do you not remark, I said, how great is the evil which ofscepti-
dialectic has introduced ?
242
The danger of dialectical studies.
Republic
VIL
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
in the
minds of
the young
illustrated
by the case
of a suppo-
sititious
son,
who ceases
to honour
his father
when he
discovers
that he is
not his
father.
What evil ? he said.
The students of the art are filled with lawlessness.
Quite true, he said.
Do you think that there is anything so very unnatural
or inexcusable in their case ? or will you make allowance
for them ?
In what way make allowance ?
I want you, I said, by way of parallel, to imagine a
supposititious son who is brought up in great wealth; he
is one of a great and numerous family, and has many 538
flatterers. When he grows up to manhood, he learns that
his alleged are not his real parents; but who the real are
he is unable to discover. Can you guess how he will be
likely to behave towards his flatterers and his supposed
parents, first of all during the period when he is ignorant of
the false relation, and then again when he knows ? Or shall
I guess for you ?
If you please.
Then I should say, that while he is ignorant of the truth
he will be likely to honour his father and his mother and his
supposed relations more than the flatterers ; he will be less
inclined to neglect them when in need, or to do or say any-
thing against them; and he will be less willing to disobey
them in any important matter.
He will.
But when he has made the discovery, I should imagine
that he would diminish his honour and regard for them, and
would become more devoted to the flatterers ; their influence
over him would greatly increase; he would now live after
their ways, and openly associate with them, and, unless he
were of an unusually good disposition, he would trouble him-
self no more about his supposed parents or other relations.
Well, all that is very probable. But how is the image
applicable to the disciples of philosophy ?
In this way : you know that there are certain principles
about justice and honour, which were taught us in childhood,
and under their parental authority we have been brought up,
obeying and honouring them.
That is true.
There are also opposite maxims and habits of pleasure
They undermine received opinions and beliefs. 243
which flatter and attract the soul, but do not influence those Republic
of us who have any sense of right, and they continue to obey VIL
and honour the maxims of their fathers. SOCRATES,
_, GLAUCON.
True.
Now, when a man is in this state, and the questioning So men
spirit asks what is fair or honourable, and he answers as the ^naSe
legislator has taught him, and then arguments many and the first
diverse refute his words, until he is driven into believing P™C^
that nothing is honourable any more than dishonourable, or cease to re-
just and good any more than the reverse, and so of all the sPect them-
notions which he most valued, do you think that he will still
honour and obey them as before ?
Impossible.
And when he ceases to think them honourable and natural
539 as heretofore, and he fails to discover the true, can he be
expected to pursue any life other than that which flatters his
desires ?
He cannot.
And from being a keeper of the law he is converted into a
breaker of it ?
Unquestionably.
Now all this is very natural in students of philosophy such
as I have described, and also, as I was just now saying, most
excusable.
Yes, he said ; and, I may add, pitiable.
Therefore, that your feelings may not be moved to pity
about our citizens who are now thirty years of age, every
care must be taken in introducing them to dialectic.
Certainly.
There is a danger lest they should taste the dear delight Young men
too early; for youngsters, as you may have observed, when ^J1f°ndof
they first get the taste in their mouths, argue for amusement, truth to
and are always contradicting and refuting others in imitation ^^^Jd
of those who refute them ; like puppy-dogs, they rejoice in disgrace
pulling and tearing at all who come near them. uP°n them*
x r . . , . . selves and
Yes, he said, there is nothing which they like better. upon phi-
And when they have made many conquests and received losophy.
defeats at the hands of many, they violently and speedily
get into a way of not believing anything which they believed
before, and hence, not only they, but philosophy and all that
R 2
244 The different pursuits of men at different ages.
Republic
VII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The dialec-
tician and
the eristic.
The study
of philoso-
phy to con-
tinue for
five years ;
30-35-
During fif-
teen years,
35-50, they
are to hold
office.
At the end
of that time
they are to
live chiefly
in the con-
templation
of the good,
but occa-
sionally to
return to
politics.
relates to it is apt to have a bad name with the rest of the
world.
Too true, he said.
But when a man begins to get older, he will no longer be
guilty of such insanity ; he will imitate the dialectician who is
seeking for truth, and not the eristic, who is contradicting for
the sake of amusement ; and the greater moderation of his
character will increase instead of diminishing the honour of
the pursuit.
Very true, he said.
And did we not make special provision for this, when
we said that the disciples of philosophy were to be orderly
and steadfast, not, as now, any chance aspirant or in-
truder ?
Very true.
Suppose, I said, the study of philosophy to take the place
of gymnastics and to be continued diligently and earnestly and
exclusively for twice the number of years which were passed
in bodily exercise — will that be enough ?
Would you say six or four years ? he asked.
Say five years, I replied ; at the end of the time they must
be sent down again into the den and compelled to hold any
military or other office which young men are qualified to
hold : in this way they will get their experience of life, and
there will be an opportunity of trying whether, when they
are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand
firm or flinch.
And how long is this stage of their lives to last ? 540
Fifteen years, I answered ; and when they have reached
fifty years of age, then let those who still survive and have
distinguished themselves in every action of their lives and in
every branch of knowledge come at last to their consumma-
tion : the time has now arrived at which they must raise the
eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all
things, and behold the absolute good ; for that is the pattern
according to which they are to order the State and the
lives of individuals, and the remainder of their own lives
also ; making philosophy their chief pursuit, but, when their
turn comes, toiling also at politics and ruling for the public
good, not as though they were performing some heroic
The means by which our State may be realized. 245
action, but simply as a matter of duty ; and when they have Republic
brought up in each generation others like themselves and VI1'
left them in their place to be governors of the State, then SOCRATES.
they will depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell there ;
and the city will give them public memorials and sacrifices
and honour them, if the Pythian oracle consent, as demigods,
but if not, as in any case blessed and divine.
You are a sculptor, Socrates, and have made statues of
our governors faultless in beauty.
Yes, I said, Glaucon, and of our governesses too ; for you
must not suppose that what I have been saying applies
to men only and not to women as far as their natures
can go.
There you are right, he said, since we have made them
to share in all things like the men.
Well, I said, and you would agree (would you not?)
that what has been said about the State and the govern-
ment is not a mere dream, and although difficult not im-
possible, but only possible in the way which has been
supposed ; that is to say, when the true philosopher kings
are born in a State, one or more of them, despising the
honours of this present world which they deem mean and
worthless, esteeming above all things right and the honour
that springs from right, and regarding justice as the greatest
and most necessary of all things, whose ministers they are,
and whose principles will be exalted by them when they set
in order their own city ?
How will they proceed ?
They will begin by sending out into the country all the Practical
inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and £^"res
will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected speedy
by the habits of their parents ; these they will train in their
own habits and laws, I mean in the laws which we have state,
given them: and in this way the State and constitution
of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily
attain happiness, and the nation which has such a constitu-
tion will gain most.
Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates,
that you have very well described how, if ever, such a con-
stitution might come into being.
246 The end.
Republic Enough then of the perfect State, and of the man who
bears its image — there is no difficulty in seeing how we shall
describe him.
There is no difficulty, he replied ; and I agree with you in
thinking that nothing more need be said.
BOOK VIII.
steph. AND so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in Republic
the perfect State wives and children are to be in common ; vin-
and that all education and the pursuits of war and peace are ^Jj^'
also to be common, and the best philosophers and the Reca itu
bravest warriors are to be their kings ? lation of
That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged. Book v-
Yes, I said ; and we have further acknowledged that
the governors, when appointed themselves, will take their
soldiers and place them in houses such as we were describing,
which are common to all, and contain nothing private, or
individual; and about their property, you remember what
we agreed ?
Yes, I remember that no one was to have any of the
ordinary possessions of mankind ; they were to be warrior
athletes and guardians, receiving from the other citizens, in
lieu of annual payment, only their maintenance, and they
were to take care of themselves and of the whole State.
True, I said ; and now that this division of our task is
concluded, let us find the point at which we digressed, that
we may return into the old path.
There is no difficulty in returning ; you implied, then as Return to
now, that you had finished the description of the State : you
said that such a State was good, and that the man was good
who answered to it, although, as now appears, you had more
544 excellent things to relate b<?th of State and man. And
you said further, that if this was the true form, then the others
were false ; and of the false forms, you said, as I remember,
that there were four principal ones, and that their defects, and
the defects of the individuals corresponding to them, were
worth examining. When we had seen all the individuals, and
finally agreed as to who was the best and who was the worst
248
The four forms of government,
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Four im-
perfect con-
stitutions,
the Cretan
or Spartan,
Oligarchy,
Demo-
cracy,
Tyranny.
States are
like men,
because
they are
made up of
of them, we were to consider whether the best was not
also the happiest, and the worst the most miserable. I
asked you what were the four forms of government of which
you spoke, and then Polemarchus and Adeimantus put in
their word ; and you began again, and have found your way
to the point at which we have now arrived.
Your recollection, I said, is most exact.
Then, like a wrestler, he replied, you must put yourself
again in the same position ; and let me ask the same
questions, and do you give me the same answer which
you were about to give me then.
Yes, if I can, I will, I. said.
I shall particularly wish to hear what were the four
constitutions of which you were speaking.
That question, I said, is easily answered : the four govern-
ments of which I spoke, so far as they have distinct names,
are, first, those of Crete and Sparta, which are generally
applauded ; what is termed oligarchy comes next ; this is
not equally approved, and is a form of government which
teems with evils : thirdly, democracy, Which naturally follows
oligarchy, although very different : and lastly comes tyranny,
great and famous, which differs from them all, and is the
fourth and worst disorder of a State. I do not know, do you ?
of any other constitution which can be said to have a distinct
character. There are lordships and principalities which are
bought and sold, and some other intermediate forms of
government. But these are nondescripts and may be found
equally among Hellenes and among barbarians.
Yes, he replied, we certainly hear of many curious forms of
government which exist among them.
Do you know, I said, that governments vary as the
dispositions of men vary, and that there must be as many
of the one as there are of the other? For we cannot
suppose that States are made of 'oak and rock/ and not
out of the human natures which are in them, and which
in a figure turn the scale and draw other things after them ?
Yes, he said, the States are as the men are; they grow
out of human characters.
Then if the constitutions of States are five, the dispositions
of individual minds will also be five ?
and the four individuals who answer to them. 249
Certainly. Republic
Him who answers to aristocracy, and whom we rightly 7 '
145 call just and good, we have already described.
We have.
Then let us now proceed to describe the inferior sort of
natures, being the contentious and ambitious, who answer
to the Spartan polity; also the oligarchical, democratical,
and tyrannical. Let us place the most just by the side of
the most unjust, and when we see them we shall be able
to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of him
who leads .a life of pure justice or pure injustice. The
enquiry will then be completed. And we shall know whether
we ought to pursue injustice, as Thrasymachus advises, or
in accordance with the conclusions of the argument to prefer
justice.
Certainly, he replied, we must do as you say.
Shall we follow our old plan, which we adopted with a The State
view to clearness, of taking the State first and then pro-
ceeding to the individual, and begin with the government of
honour ? — I know of no name for such a government other
than timocracy, or perhaps timarchy. We will compare with
this the like character in the individual; and, after that,
consider oligarchy and the oligarchical man ; and then again
we will turn our attention to democracy and the democratical
man ; and lastly, we will go and view the city of tyranny,
and once more take a look into the tyrant's soul, and try to
arrive at a satisfactory decision.
That way of viewing and judging of the matter will be
very suitable.
First, then, I said, let us enquire how timocracy (the HOW ti-
government of honour) arises out of aristocracy (the govern- ^^tof
ment of the best). Clearly, all political changes originate in aristocracy.
divisions of the actual governing power ; a government which
is united, however small, cannot be moved.
Very true, he said.
In what way, then, will our city be moved, and in what
manner will the two classes of auxiliaries and rulers disagree
among themselves or with one another? Shall we, after
the manner of Homer, pray the Muses to tell us 'how
discord first arose'? Shall we imagine them in solemn
250
The number of the State.
Republic
VIII,
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The intel-
ligence
which is
alloyed
with sense
will not
know how
to regulate
births and
deaths in
accordance
with the
number
which con-
trols them.
mockery, to play and jest with us as if we were children,
and to address us in a lofty tragic vein, making believe to
be in earnest ?
How would they address us ?
After this manner : — A city which is thus constituted can 546
hardly be shaken ; but, seeing that everything which has
a beginning has also an end, even a constitution such as yours
will not last for ever, but will in time be dissolved. And this
is the dissolution : — In plants that grow in the earth, as well
as in animals that move on the earth's surface, fertility and
sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences
of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived exist-
ences pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a
long space. But to the knowledge of human fecundity and
sterility all the wisdom and education of your rulers will not
attain ; the laws which regulate them will not be discovered by
an intelligence which is alloyed with sense, but will escape
them, and they will bring children into the world when they
ought not. Now that which is of divine birth has a period
which is contained in a perfect number,1 but the period of
human birth is comprehended in a number in which first in-
crements by involution and evolution [or squared and cubed]
obtaining three intervals and four terms of like and unlike,
waxing and waning numbers, make all the terms commen-
surable and agreeable to one another.2 The base of these
(3) with a third added (4) when combined with five (20) and
raised to the third power furnishes two harmonies ; the first
a square which is a hundred times as great (400 = 4 x ioo),3
and the other a figure having one side equal to the former,
but oblong,4 consisting of a hundred numbers squared upon
rational diameters of a square (i. e. omitting fractions), the
side of which is five (7 x 7 = 49 X ioo = 4900), each of them
1 i.e. a cyclical number, such as 6, which is equal to the sum of its divisors
i, 2, 3, so that when the circle or time represented by 6 is completed, the lesser
times or rotations represented by i, 2, 3 are also completed.
2 Probably the numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 of which the three first = the sides of the
Pythagorean triangle. The terms will then be 3% 4", 53, which together
= 63 = 2i6.
3 Or the first a square which is icox 100 = 10,000. The whole number will
then be 17, 500 = a square of ioo, and an oblong of ioo by 75.
4 Reading irpo^/cr; 5e.
The first step in the descent. 251
being less by one (than the perfect square which includes Republic
the fractions, sc. 50) or less by1 two perfect squares of VHI-
irrational diameters (of a square the side of which is five SOCRATES,
= 50 + 50 = 100) ; and a hundred cubes of three (27 x 100
= 2700 + 4900 + 400 = 8000). Now this number represents
a geometrical figure which has control over the good and
evil of births. For when your guardians are ignorant of the
law of births, and unite bride and bridegroom out of season,
the children will not be goodly or fortunate. And though
only the best of them will be appointed by their predecessors,
still they will be unworthy to hold their fathers' places, and
when they come into power as guardians, they will soon be
found to fail in taking care of us, the Muses, first by under-
valuing music ; which neglect will soon extend to gymnastic ;
and hence the young men of your State will be less cultivated.
In the succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who
have lost the guardian power of testing the metal of your
different races, which, like Hesiod's, are of gold and silver
547 and brass and iron. And so iron will be mingled with silver,
and brass with gold, and hence there will arise dissimilarity
and inequality and irregularity, which always and in all
places are causes of hatred and war. This the Muses affirm
to be the stock from which discord has sprung, wherever
arising ; and this is their answer to us.
Yes, and we may assume that they answer truly.
Why, yes, I said, of course they answer truly ; how can
the Muses speak falsely ?
And what do the Muses say next ?
When discord arose, then the two races were drawn Thendis-
different ways : the iron and brass fell to acquiring money ^^^
and land and houses and gold and silver ; but the gold and dual took
silver races, not wanting money but having the true riches in the place
. . J of common
their own nature, inclined towards virtue and the ancient property.
order of things. There was a battle between them, and at
last they agreed to distribute their land and houses among
individual owners ; and they enslaved their friends and main-
tainers, whom they had formerly protected in the condition
of freemen, and made of them subjects and servants ; and
1 Or, 'consisting of two numbers squared upon irrational diameters/ &c.
= loo. For other explanations of the passage see Introduction.
252
/. From the perfect state to timocracy.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Timocracy
will retain
the military
and reject
the philo-
sophical
character
of the per-
fect State.
The soldier
class miser-
ly and
covetous.
they themselves were engaged in war and in keeping a watch
against them.
I believe that you have rightly conceived the origin of the
change.
And the new government which thus arises will be of a
form intermediate between oligarchy and aristocracy ?
Very true.
Such will be the change, and after the change has been
made, how will they proceed ? Clearly, the new State, being
in a mean between oligarchy and the perfect State, will
partly follow one and partly the other, and will also have
some peculiarities.
True, he said.
In the honour given to rulers, in the abstinence of the
warrior class from agriculture, handicrafts, and trade in
general, in the institution of common meals, and in the
attention paid to gymnastics and military training — in all
these respects this State will resemble the former.
True.
But in the fear of admitting philosophers to power, because
they are no longer to be had simple and earnest, but are
made up of mixed elements ; and in turning from them to
passionate and less complex characters, who are by nature
fitted for war rather than peace ; and in the value set by 548
them upon military stratagems and contrivances, and in the
waging of everlasting wars — this State will be for the most
part peculiar.
Yes.
Yes, I said ; and men of this stamp will be covetous of
money, like those who live in oligarchies ; they will have a
fierce secret longing after gold and silver, which they will
hoard in dark places, having magazines and treasuries of
their own for the deposit and concealment of them ; also
castles which are just nests for their eggs, and in which they
will spend large sums on their wives, or on any others whom
they please.
That is most true, he said.
And they are miserly because they have no means of
openly acquiring the money which they prize; they will
spend that which is another man's on the gratification of
The timocratic man — his origin and character. 253
their desires, stealing their pleasures and running away like Republic
children from the law, their father : they have been schooled VI11'
not by gentle influences but by force, for they have neglected SOCRATES,
i i • i n* i • i GLAUCON,
her who is the true Muse, the companion of reason and
philosophy, and have honoured gymnastic more than music.
Undoubtedly, he said, the form of government which you
describe is a mixture of good and evil.
Why, there is a mixture, I said ; but one thing, and one The spirit
thing only, is predominantly seen,— the spirit of contention °[^|fon
and ambition ; and these are due to the prevalence of the nates in
passionate or spirited element. such States.
Assuredly, he said.
Such is the origin and sucK the character of this State,
which has been described in outline only ; the more perfect
execution was not required, for a sketch is enough to show
the type of the most perfectly just and most perfectly unjust ;
and to go through all the States and all the characters of
men, omitting none of them, would be an interminable
labour.
Very true, he replied.
Now what man answers to this form of government — how The timo-
did he come into being, and what is he like ? cratic man-
T t . i . , A . .. . . . uncultured,
1 think, said Adeimantus, that in the spirit of contention but fond
which characterises him, he is not unlike our friend Glaucon. of culture,
Perhaps, I said, he may be like him in that one point ; but content^5'
there are other respects in which he is very different. °us, rough
In what respects? ™£?
He should have more of self-assertion and be less culti- teousto
vated, and yet a friend of culture ; and he should be a good ^soldier'
549 listener, but no speaker. Such a person is apt to be rough athlete,
with slaves, unlike the educated man, who is too proud for hunter ; a
despiser of
that ; and he will also be courteous to freemen, and remark- riches while
ably obedient to authority ; he is a lover of power and a y°un£'
lover of honour ; claiming to be a ruler, not because he is them when
eloquent, or on any ground of that sort, but because he is a he grows
soldier and has performed feats of arms ; he is also a lover
of gymnastic exercises and of the chase.
Yes, that is the type of character which answers to timo-
cracy.
Such an one will despise riches only when he is young ;
254
The timocratic man.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The timo-
cratic man
often ori-
ginates in
a reaction
against his
father's
character,
which is
encouraged
by his
mother,
and by
the old ser-
vants of the
household.
but as he gets older he will be more and more attracted to
them, because he has a piece of the avaricious nature in
him, and is not single-minded towards virtue, having lost his
best guardian.
Who was that ? said Adeimantus.
Philosophy, I said, tempered with music, who comes and
takes up her abode in a man, and is the only saviour of his
virtue throughout life.
Good, he said.
Such, I said, is the timocratical youth, and he is like the
timocratical State.
Exactly.
His origin is as follows : — He is often the young son of a
brave father, who dwells in an ill-governed city, of which he
declines the honours and offices, and will not go to law, or
exert himself in any way, but is ready to waive his rights in
order that he may escape trouble.
And how does the son come into being ?
The character of the son begins to develope when he
hears his mother complaining that her husband has no place
in the government, of which the consequence is that she has
no precedence among other women. Further, when she
sees her husband not very eager about money, and instead
of battling and railing in the law courts or assembly, taking
whatever happens to him quietly; and when she observes
that his thoughts always centre in himself, while he treats
her with very considerable indifference, she is annoyed, and
says to her son that his father is only half a man and far too
easy-going: adding all the other complaints about her own
ill-treatment which women are so fond of rehearsing.
Yes, said Adeimantus, they give us plenty of them, and
their complaints are so like themselves.
And you know, I said, that the old servants also, who are sup-
posed to be attached to the family, from time to time talk pri-
vately in the same strain to the son ; and if they see any one
who owes money to his father, or is wronging him in any
way, and he fails to prosecute them, they tell the youth that
when he grows up he must retaliate upon people of this sort, 550
and be more of a man than his father. He has only to walk
abroad and he hears and sees the same sort of thing : those
II. From timocracy to oligarchy. 255
who do their own business in the city are called simpletons, Republic
and held in no esteem, while the busy-bodies are honoured vin-
and applauded. The result is that the young man. hearing SOCRATES,
. . . i . ADEIMANTUS.
and seeing all these things — hearing, too, the words of his
father, and having a nearer view of his way of life, and
making comparisons of him and others — is drawn opposite
ways : while his father is watering and nourishing the
rational principle in his soul, the others are encouraging
the passionate and appetitive; and he being not originally
of a bad nature, but having kept bad company, is at last
brought by their joint influence to a middle point, and gives
up the kingdom which is within him to the middle principle
of contentiousness and passion, and becomes arrogant and
ambitious.
You seem to me to have described his origin perfectly.
Then we have now, I said, the second form of government
and the second type of character ?
We have.
Next, let us look at another man who, as Aeschylus says,
' Is set over against another State ; '
or rather, as our plan requires, begin with the State.
By all means.
I believe that oligarchy follows next in order. Oligarchy
And what manner of government do you term oligarchy ?
A government resting on a valuation of property, in which
the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.
I understand, he replied.
Ought I not to begin by describing how the change from
timocracy to oligarchy arises ?
Yes.
Well, I said, no eyes are required in order to see how the
one passes into the other.
How?
The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private indivi- arises out of
duals is the ruin of timocracy ; they invent illegal modes ^mmia
of expenditure ; for what do they or their wives care about the tion and
law ? increased
' . expendi-
YCS, indeed. ture among
And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival the citizens.
256
The evils of oligarchy.
Republic
VIIL
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
As riches
increase,
virtue de-
creases :
the one is
honoured,
the other
despised ;
the one
cultivated,
the other
neglected.
In an oli-
garchy a
money qua-
lification
is estab-
lished.
A ruler is
elected be-
cause he
is rich :
Who would
elect a pilot
on this
principle?
him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of
money,
Likely enough.
And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they
think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue ; for
when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales
of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.
True.
And in proportion as riches and rich men are honoured in 551
the State, virtue and the virtuous are dishonoured.
Clearly.
And what is honoured is cultivated, and that which has no
honour is neglected.
That is obvious.
And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men
become lovers of trade and money ; they honour and look
up to the rich man, and make a ruler of him, and dishonour
the poor man.
They do so.
They next proceed to make a law which fixes a sum
of money as the qualification of citizenship ; the sum is higher
in one place and lower in another, as the oligarchy is more
or less exclusive; and they allow no one whose property
falls below the amount fixed to have any share in the govern-
ment. These changes in the constitution they effect by force
of arms, if intimidation has not already done their work.
Very true.
And this, speaking generally, is the way in which oligarchy
is established.
Yes, he said ; but what are the characteristics of this form
of government, and what are the defects of which we were
speaking * ?
First of all, I said, consider the nature of the qualification.
Just think what would happen if pilots were to be chosen
according to their property, and a poor man were refused
permission to steer, even though he were a better pilot ?
You mean that they would shipwreck?
Yes; and is not this true of the government of anything2?
I should imagine so.
1 Cp. supra, 544 C. - Omitting */ rtvos.
The evils of oligarchy. 257
Except a city ? — or would you include a city ? Republic
Nay, he said, the case of a city is the strongest of all, VI11'
inasmuch as the rule of a city is the greatest and most SOCRATES,
•* ADEIMANTUS.
difficult of all.
This, then, will be the first great defect of oligarchy ?
Clearly.
And here is another defect which is quite as bad.
What defect?
The inevitable division : such a State is not one, but two The ex-
States, the one of poor, the other of rich men ; and they are ^™e dl"
living on the same spot and always conspiring against one classes in
another.
That, surely, is at least as bad.
Another discreditable feature is, that, for a like reason, They dare
they are incapable of carrying on any war. Either they arm not go to
the multitude, and then they are more afraid of them than of
the enemy; or, if they do not call them out in the hour
of battle, they are oligarchs indeed, few to fight as they
are few to rule. And at the same time their fondness
for money makes them unwilling to pay taxes.
How discreditable !
And, as we said before, under such a constitution the
552 same persons have too many callings — they are husband-
men, tradesmen, warriors, all in one. Does that look well ?
Anything but well.
There is another evil which is, perhaps, the greatest of all,
and to which this State first begins to be liable.
What evil?
A man may sell all that he has, and another may acquire The ruined
his property ; yet after the sale he may dwell in the city ™an' who
of which he is no longer a part, being neither trader, nor cupation,
artisan, nor horseman, nor hoplite, but only a poor, helpless once a
J spendthrift,
creature. nowapau-
Yes, that is an evil which also first begins in this State. per, still
The evil is certainly not prevented there ; for oligarchies *5 m the
have both the extremes of great wealth and utter poverty.
True.
But think again : In his wealthy days, while he was
spending his money, was a man of this sort a whit more
good to the State for the purposes of citizenship ? Or
s
258 The flying and walking drones, stingers or stingless.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Where
there are
paupers,
there are
thieves
and other
criminals.
did he only seem to be a member of the ruling body,
although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just
a spendthrift ?
As you say, he seemed to be a ruler, but was only a
spendthrift.
May we not say that this is the drone in the house who is
like the drone in the honeycomb, and that the one is the
plague of the city as the other is of the hive ?
Just so, Socrates.
And God has made the flying drones, Adeimantus, all
without stings, whereas of the walking drones he has made
some without stings but others have dreadful stings; of
the stingless class are those who in their old age end as
paupers ; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they
are termed.
Most true, he said.
Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, some-
where in that neighbourhood there are hidden away thieves
and cut-purses and robbers of temples, and all sorts of
malefactors.
Clearly.
Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find
paupers ?
Yes, he said ; nearly everybody is a pauper who is not
a ruler.
And may we be so bold as to affirm that there are also
many criminals to be found in them, rogues who have stings,
and whom the authorities are careful to restrain by force ?
Certainly, we may be so bold.
The existence of such persons is to be attributed to want
of education, ill-training, and an evil constitution of the
State ?
True.
Such, then, is the form and such are the evils of oligarchy;
and there may be many other evils.
Very likely.
Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the 553
rulers are elected for their wealth, may now be dismissed.
Let us next proceed to consider the nature and origin of the
individual who answers to this State.
From the timocratical to the oligarchical man. 259
By all means. Republic
Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical VHI'
On this Wise ? SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The ruin of
A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has the timo-
a son : at first he begins by emulating his father and walking cratical
in his footsteps, but presently he sees him of a sudden birth to the
foundering against the State as upon a sunken reef, and he oljgarchi-
and all that he has is lost ; he may have been a general or
some other high officer who is brought to trial under a
prejudice raised by informers, and either put to death, or
exiled, or deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and all his
property taken from him*
Nothing more likely.
And the son has seen and known all this — he is a ruined His son
man, and his fear has taught him to knock ambition and J*?™?1^*
ruined man
passion headforemost from his bosom's throne ; humbled by and takes
poverty he takes to money-making and by mean and miserly to ™oney-
savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such
an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element
on the vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king
within him, girt with tiara and chain and scimitar ?
Most true, he replied.
And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the
ground obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught
them to know their place, he compels the one to think only
of how lesser sums may be turned into larger ones, and
will not allow the other to worship and admire anything but
riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything so much
as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it.
Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as
the conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one.
And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth ?
Yes, he said ; at any rate the individual out of whom he The oii-
came is like the State out of which oligarchy came. garchical
Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between state re-
them. sembleone
_ _ . another in
554 Very good. their esti-
First, then, they resemble one another in the value which mation of
they set upon wealth ?
S 2
260 The individual and the State again.
Republic Certainly.
Also in their penurious, laborious character; the indi-
onty satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his
in their expenditure to them ; his other desires he subdues, under
toiling and the idea that they are unprofitable.
their 'want He is a shabby fellow, who saves something out of every-
of cuitiva- thing and makes a purse for himself; and this is the sort of
man whom the vulgar applaud. Is he not a true image of
the State which he represents ?
He appears to me to be so ; at any rate money is highly
valued by him as well as by the State.
You see that he is not a man of cultivation, I said.
I imagine not, he said ; had he been educated he would
never have made a blind god director of his chorus, or given
him chief honour \
Excellent ! I said. Yet consider : Must we not further
admit that owing to this want of cultivation there will be
found in him dronelike desires as of pauper and rogue, which
are forcibly kept down by his general habit of life ?
True.
Do you know where you will have to look if you want to
discover his rogueries ?
Where must I look ?
The oli- You should see him where he has some great opportunity
man keeps °^ actmg dishonestly, as in the guardianship of an orphan.
up a fair Aye.
buUithas Ifc W*N t>e clear enough tnen that in his ordinary dealings
only an en- which give him a reputation for honesty he coerces his bad
tue^anciwiii Pass^ons by an enforced virtue ; not making them see that
cheat when they are wrong, or taming them by reason,- but by necessity
he can. ancj fear constraining them, and because he trembles for his
possessions.
To be sure.
Yes, indeed, my dear friend, but you will find that the
natural desires of the drone commonly exist in him all the
same whenever he has to spend what is not his own.
1 Reading ical £rf/*a futXurra. E?3 fy & *y&, according to Schneider's excel-
lent emendation.
///. From oligarchy to democracy. 261
Yes, and they will be strong in him too. Republic
The man, then, will be at war with himself; he will be two VIIL
men, and not one ; but, in general, his better desires will be
found to prevail over his inferior ones.
True.
For these reasons such an one will be more respectable
than most people ; yet the true virtue of a unanimous and
harmonious soul will flee far away and never come near him.
I should expect so.
555 And surely, the miser individually will be an ignoble com- His mean-
petitor in a State for any prize of victory, or other object of Contest* he
honourable ambition ; he will not spend his money in the saves his
contest for glory ; so afraid is he of awakening his expensive
appetites and inviting them to help and join in the struggle ; prize.
in true oligarchical fashion he fights with a small part only
of his resources, and the result commonly is that he loses
the prize and saves his money.
Very true.
Can we any longer doubt, then, that the miser and money-
maker answers to the oligarchical State ?
There can be no doubt.
Next comes democracy; of this the origin and nature have Democracy
still to be considered by us ; and then we will enquire into the a!is^s out
ways of the democratic man, and bring him up for judgment, travagance
That, he said, is our method. and indebt-
Well, I said, and how does the change from oligarchy menof
into democracy arise ? Is it not on this wise ? — The good at family and
which such a State aims is to become as rich as possible, a F
desire which is insatiable ?
What then ?
The rulers, being aware that their power rests upon their
wealth, refuse to curtail by law the extravagance of the
spendthrift youth because they gain by their ruin; they
take interest from them and buy up their estates and thus
increase their own wealth and importance ?
To be sure,
There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the
spirit of moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the
same state to any considerable extent ; one or the other will
be disregarded.
262
' Suo periculo!
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEMANTUS.
who remain
in the city,
and form a
dangerous
class ready
to head a
revolution.
Two reme-
dies : (i) re-
strictions
on the free
use of
property ;
(2) con-
tracts to be
made at a
man's own
risk.
That is tolerably clear.
And in oligarchical States, from the general spread of
carelessness and extravagance, men of good family have
often been reduced to beggary ?
Yes, often.
And still they remain in the city; there they are, ready
to sting and fully armed, and some of them owe money, some
have forfeited their citizenship; a third class are in both
predicaments ; and they hate and conspire against those who
have got their property, and against everybody else, and are
eager for revolution.
That is true.
On the other hand, the men of business, stooping as they
walk, and pretending not even to see those whom they have
already ruined, insert their sting — that is, their money— into
some one else who is not on his guard against them, and
recover the parent sum many times over multiplied into
a family of children : and so they make drone and pauper to
abound in the State.
Yes, he said, there are plenty of them — that is certain. 555
The evil blazes up like a fire ; and they will not extinguish
it, either by restricting a man's use of his own property, or
by another remedy :
What other ?
One which is the next best, and has the advantage of
compelling the citizens to look to their characters: — Let
there be a general rule that every one shall enter into
voluntary contracts at his own risk, and there will be less
of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of which
we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State.
Yes, they will be greatly lessened.
At present the governors, induced by the motives which
I have named, treat their subjects badly; while they and
their adherents, especially the young men of the governing
class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness
both of body and mind ; they do nothing, and are incapable
of resisting either pleasure or pain.
Very true.
They themselves care only for making money, and are
as indifferent as the pauper to the cultivation of virtue.
The oligarchy falls sick. 263
Yes, quite as indifferent. Republic
Such is the state of affairs which prevails among them. vin-
And often rulers and their subjects may come in one another's SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
way, whether on a journey or on some other occasion of „,
meeting, on a pilgrimage or a march, as fellow-soldiers or jectsdis-
fellow-sailors ; aye and they may observe the behaviour of covf the
.'-, ,• i weakness of
each other in the very moment of danger — for where danger ^eir rulers.
is, there is no fear that the poor will be despised by the
rich — and very likely the wiry sunburnt poor man may be
placed in battle at the side of a wealthy one who has never
spoilt his complexion and has plenty of superfluous flesh —
when he sees such an one puffing and at his wits'-end, how
can he avoid drawing the conclusion that men like him are
only rich because no one has the courage to despoil them ?
And when they meet in private will not people be saying
to one another ' Our warriors are not good for much ' ?
Yes, he said, I am quite aware that this is their way
of talking.
And, as in a body which is diseased the addition of a A slight
touch from without may bring on illness, and sometimes even cause> in'
J ternal or
when there is no external provocation a commotion may external,
arise within — in the same way wherever there is weakness may Pr°-
in the State there is also likely to be illness, of which the oc- lv^on ev
casion may be very slight, the one party introducing from with-
out their oligarchical, the other their democratical allies, and
then the State falls sick, and is at war with herself; and may
557 be at times distracted, even when there is no external cause.
Yes, surely.
And then democracy comes into being after the poor have Such is the
conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing ongin ar*d
some, while to the remainder they give an equal share democracy,
of freedom and power ; and this is the form of government in
which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot.
Yes, he said, that is the nature of democracy, whether the
revolution has been effected by arms, or whether fear has
caused the opposite party to withdraw.
And now what is their manrfbr of life, and what sort of a
government have they ? for as the government is, such will
be the man.
Clearly, he said.
264
The characteristics of democracy.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Democracy
allows a
man to do
as he likes,
and there-
fore con-
tains the •
greatest
variety of
characters
and consti-
tutions.
The law
falls into
abeyance.
In the first place, are they not free ; and is not the city
full of freedom and frankness — a man may say and do
what he likes ?
JTis said so, he replied.
And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to
order for himself his own life as he pleases ?
Clearly.
Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest variety
of human natures ?
There will.
This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States, being
like an embroidered robe which is spangled with every sort
of flower '. And just as women and children think a variety
of colours to be of all things most charming, so there are
many men to whom this State, which is spangled with the
manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be the
fairest of States.
Yes.
Yes, my good Sir, and there will be no better in which to
look for a government.
Why?
Because »of the liberty which reigns there — they have a
complete assortment of constitutions ; and he who has a
mind to establish a State, as we have been doing, must go to
a democracy as he would to a bazaar at which they sell them,
and pick out the one that suits him; then, when he has
made his choice, he may found his State.
He will be sure to have patterns enough.
And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in
this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed,
unless you like, or to go to war when the rest go to war, or
to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so
disposed— there being no necessity also, because some law
forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you should
not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy — is not
this a way of life which for the moment is supremely de- 558
lightful?
For the moment, yes.
Omitting
The nature and origin of the democratic man. 265
And is not their humanity to the condemned1 in some Republic
cases quite charming? Have you not observed how, in a
democracy, many persons, although they have been sen-
tenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk
about the world — the gentleman parades like a hero, and
nobody sees or cares ?
Yes, he replied, many and many a one.
See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the All prin-
' don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows |^^d
of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the good taste
foundation of the city— as when we said that, except in the case are tram~
f- i •/- i i .11 i i pled under
of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man foot by
who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things democracy.
of beauty and make of them a joy and a study — how grandly
does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her
feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a
statesman, and promoting to honour any one who professes
to be the people's friend,
Yes, she is of a noble spirit.
These and other kindred characteristics are proper to
democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of
variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to
equals and unequals alike.
We know her well.
Consider now, I said, what manner of man the individual
is, or rather consider, as in the case of the State, how he
comes into being.
Very good, he said,
Is not this the way — he is the son of the miserly and oli-
garchical father who has trained him in his own habits ?
Exactly.
And, like his father, he keeps under by force the pleasures Which are
which are of the spending and not of the getting sort, being *e n^s"
those which are called unnecessary ? whidTthe
Obviously. unneces-
Would you like, for the sake of clearness, to distinguish surest **
which are the necessary and which are the unnecessary
pleasures ?
I should.
1 Or, ' the philosophical temper of the condemned.'
266 The necessary and unnecessary desires and pleasures.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Necessary
desires can-
not be got
rid of,
but may be
indulged to
Illustration
taken from
eating and
drinking.
Are not necessary pleasures those of which we cannot get
rid, and of which the satisfaction is a benefit to us ? And
they are rightly called so, because we are framed by nature
to desire both what is beneficial and what is necessary, and
cannot help it.
True. 559
We are not wrong therefore in calling them necessary ?
We are not.
And the desires of which a man may get rid, if he takes
pains from his youth upwards — of which the presence, more-
over, does no good, and in some cases the reverse of good —
shall we not be right in saying that all these are unnecessary ?
Yes, certainly.
Suppose we select an example of either kind, in order that
we may have a general notion of them ?
Very good.
Will not the desire of eating, that is, of simple food and
condiments, in so far as they are required for health and
strength, be of the necessary class ?
That is what I should suppose.
The pleasure of eating is necessary in two ways ; it does us
good and it is essential to the continuance of life ?
Yes.
But the condiments are only necessary in so far as they are
good for health ?
Certainly.
And the desire which goes beyond this, of more delicate
food, or other luxuries, which might generally be got rid of,
if controlled and trained in youth, and is hurtful to the body,
and hurtful to the soul in the pursuit of wisdom and virtue,
may be rightly called unnecessary ?
Very true.
May we not say that these desires spend, and that the
others make money because they conduce to production ?
Certainly.
And of the pleasures of love, and all other pleasures, the
same holds good ?
True.
And the drone of whom we spoke was he who was sur-
feited in pleasures and desires of this sort, and was the slave
From the oligarchical to the democratical man. 267
of the unnecessary desires, whereas he who was subject Republic
to the necessary only was miserly and oligarchical ?
VeiT true. SOCRATES,
J ADEIMANTUS.
Again, let us see how the democratical man grows out
of the oligarchical : the following, as I suspect, is commonly
the process.
What is the process ?
When a young man who has been brought up as we The young
were just now describing, in a vulgar and miserly way, has {^fJJJjJ1 *
tasted drones* honey and has come to associate with fierce his wild as-
and crafty natures who are able to provide for him all sorts sociates-
of refinements and varieties of pleasure — then, as you may
imagine, the change will begin of the oligarchical principle
within him into the democratical ?
Inevitably.
And as in the city like was helping like, and the change There are
was effected by an alliance from without assisting one division a?Jfs to
J either part
of the citizens, so too the young man is changed by a class of of his na-
desires coming from without to assist the desires within him, ture-
that which is akin and alike again helping that which is akin
and alike ?
Certainly.
And if there be any ally which aids the oligarchical prin-
ciple within him, whether the influence of a father or of
kindred, advising or rebuking him, then there arises in his
3o soul a faction and an opposite faction, and he goes to war
with himself.
It must be so.
And there are times when the democratical principle gives
way to the oligarchical, and some of his desires die, and
others are banished ; a spirit of reverence enters into the
young man's soul and order is restored.
Yes, he said, that sometimes happens.
And then, again, after the old desires have been driven out,
fresh ones spring up, which are akin to them, and because he
their father does not know how to educate them, wax fierce
and numerous.
Yes, he said, that is apt to be the way.
They draw him to his old associates, and holding secret
intercourse with them, breed and multiply in him.
268
The parable of the prodigal.
Republic
VIIL
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The pro-
gress of the
oligarchic
young man
told in an
allegory.
Hebe-
comes a
rake ; but
Very true.
At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man's
soul, which they perceive to be void of all accomplishments
and fair pursuits and true words, which make their abode in
the minds of men who are dear to the gods, and are their
best guardians and sentinels.
None better.
False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upwards
and take their place.
They are certain to do so.
And so the young man returns into the country of the
lotus-eaters, and takes up his dwelling there in the face of
all men ; and if any help be sent by his friends to the
oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain conceits shut
the gate of the king's fastness ; and they will neither allow
the embassy itself to enter, nor if private advisers offer the
fatherly counsel of the aged will they listen to them or
receive them. There is a battle and they gain the day, and
then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously
thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nick-
name unmanliness, is trampled in the mire and cast forth;
they persuade men that moderation and orderly expenditure
are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble
of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border.
Yes, with a will.
And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of
him who is now in their power and who is being initiated by
them in great mysteries, the next thing is to bring back to
their house insolence and anarchy and waste and impudence
in bright array having garlands on their heads, and a
great company with them, hymning their praises and calling
them by sweet names ; insolence they term breeding, and 561
anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence
courage. And so the young man passes out of his original
nature, .which was trained in the school of necessity, into
the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary
pleasures.
Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.
After this he lives on, spending his money and labour and
time on unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary
Liberty, eqiiality, multiformity. 269
ones ; but if he be fortunate, and is not too much disordered Republic
in his wits, when years have elapsed, and the heyday of
passion is over — supposing that he then re-admits into the
city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not wholly give he also
himself up to their successors — in that case he balances his sometimes
pleasures and lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the m0£fsshort
government of himself into the hands of the one which career and
comes first and wins the turn ; and when he has had enough sives way
of that, then into the hands of another ; he despises none of g^od^ncT5
them but encourages them all equally. bad indif-
Very true, he said.
Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any He rejects
true word of advice; if any one says to him that some alladvlce-
pleasures are the satisfactions of good and noble desires,
and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use and
honour some and chastise and master the others — whenever
this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that
they are all alike, and that one is as good as another.
Yes, he said ; that is the way with him.
Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite passing his
of the hour ; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains ^^^
of the flute ; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get from one
thin ; then he takes a turn at gymnastics ; sometimes idling e*1*6™6 to
and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of
a philosopher ; often he is busy with politics, and starts to
his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head ;
and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is
in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His
life has neither law nor order ; and this distracted existence
he terms joy and bliss and freedom ; and so he goes on.
Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.
Yes, I said ; his life is motley and manifold and an He is • not
epitome of the lives of many ; — he answers to the State one» but
which we described as fair and spangled. And many a kind's*1"
man and many a woman will take him for their pattern, epitome.'
and many a constitution and many an example of manners
is contained in him.
Just so.
>2 Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly
be called the democratic man.
2 7o
IV. From democracy to tyranny.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Tyranny
and the
tyrant.
The insati-
able desire
of wealth
creates a
demand for
democracy,
the insati-
able desire
of freedom
creates a
demand for
tyranny.
Freedom
in the end
means
anarchy.
Let that be his place, he said.
Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and
State alike, tyranny and the tyrant ; these we have now to
consider.
Quite true, he said.
Say then, my friend, In what manner does tyranny arise ?
— that it has a democratic origin is evident.
Clearly.
And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same
manner as democracy from oligarchy — I mean, after a sort ?
How?
The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the
means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth —
am I not right ?
Yes.
And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all
other things for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin
of oligarchy?
True.
And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable
desire brings her to dissolution ?
What good ?
Freedom, I replied ; which, as they tell you in a demo-
cracy, is the glory of the State — and that therefore in a
democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Yes ; the saying is in every body's mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this
and the neglect of other things introduces the change in
democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
How so ?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil
cup-bearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too
deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers
are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls
them to account and punishes them, and says that they are
cursed oligarchs.
Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.
Yes, I said ; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by
her slaves who hug their chains and men of naught ; she
would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are
The extreme of liberty. 271
like subjects : these are men after her own heart, whom she Republic
praises and honours both in private and public. Now, in vin-
such a State, can liberty have any limit ? SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS
Certainly not.
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses,
and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them.
How do you mean ?
I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the
level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level
with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either
of his parents ; and this is his freedom, and the metic is
equal with the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the
>3 stranger is quite as good as either.
Yes, he said, that is the way.
And these are not the only evils, I said — there are several The inver-
lesser ones : In such a state of society the master fears and ^^^
flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters tions.
and tutors ; young and old are all alike ; and the young
man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with
him in word or deed ; and old men condescend to the young
and are full of pleasantry and gaiety ; they are loth to be
thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt
the manners of the young.
Quite true, he said.
The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave
bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free
as his or her purchaser ; nor must I forget to tell of the
liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other.
Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises to
our lips ?
That is what I am doing, I replied ; and I must add that Freedom
no one who does not know would believe, how much greater
is the liberty which the animals who are under the dominion
of man have in a democracy than in any other State : for
truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their
she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of
marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen ;
and they will run at any body who comes in their way if he
does not leave the road clear for them : and all things are
just ready to burst with liberty.
2J2
Extremes pass into extremes.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
No law, no
authority.
The com-
mon evil
of oligarchy
and demo-
cracy is the
class of idle
spend-
thrifts.
Illustra-
tion.
When I take a country walk, he said, I often experience
what you describe. You and I have dreamed the same
thing.
And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sen-
sitive the citizens become ; they chafe impatiently at the least
touch of authority, and at length, as you know, they cease to
care even for the laws, written or unwritten ; they will have
no one over them.
Yes, he said, I know it too well.
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning
out of which springs tyranny.
Glorious indeed, he said. But what is the next step ?
The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the
same disease magnified and intensified by liberty over-
masters democracy — the truth being that the excessive increase
of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction ; 564
and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable
and animal life, but above all in forms of government.
True.
The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals,
seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Yes, the natural order.
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the
most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most
extreme form of liberty ?
As we might expect.
That, however, was not, as I believe, your question —
you rather desired to know what is that disorder which is
generated alike in oligarchy and democracy, and is the ruin
of both?
Just so, he replied.
Well, I said, I meant to refer to the class of idle spend-
thrifts, of whom the more courageous are the leaders and
the more timid the followers, the same whom we were
comparing to drones, some stingless, and others having
stings.
A very just comparison.
These two classes are the plagues of every city in which
they are generated, being what phlegm and bile are to the
body. And the good physician and lawgiver of the State
A new kind of drone. 273
ought, like the wise bee-master, to keep them at a distance
and prevent, if possible, their ever coming in ; and if they vin*
have anyhow found a way in, then he should have them and SOCRATES,
* •* ADEIMANTUS.
their cells cut out as speedily as possible.
Yes, by all means, he said.
Then, in order that we may see clearly what we are doing, Altogether
let us imagine democracy to be divided, as indeed it is, into ^Jes in a
three classes; for in the first place freedom creates rather democracy.
more drones in the democratic than there were in the
oligarchical State.
That is true.
And in the democracy they are certainly more intensified.
How so ?
Because in the oligarchical State they are disqualified (i) The
and driven from office, and therefore they cannot train f^d-01
or gather strength ; whereas in a democracy they are almost thrifts who
the entire ruling power, and while the keener sort speak a
0 r r numerous
and act, the rest keep buzzing about the bema and do and active
not suffer a word to be said on the other side : hence in than m. the
oligarchy .
democracies almost everything is managed by the drones.
Very true, he said.
Then there is another class which is always being severed
from the mass.
What is that ?
They are the orderly class, which in a nation of traders is (2) The
sure to be the richest. ord^ or
wealthy
Naturally so. class who
They are the most squeezable persons and yield the largest are fed
amount of honey to the drones. the drones.
Why, he said, there is little to be squeezed out of people
who have little.
And this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed
upon them.
565 That is pretty much the case, he said.
The people are a third class, consisting of those who work (3) The
with their own hands ; they are not politicians, and have ^asswho
not much to live upon. This, when assembled, is the largest also get a
and most powerful class in a democracy.
True, he said ; but then the multitude is seldom willing to
congregate unless they get a little honey.
274
The protector developes into a tyrant.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
The well-
to-do have
to defend
themselves
against the
people.
The people
have a pro-
tector who,
when once
he tastes
blood, is
converted
into a ty-
rant.
And do they not share ? I said. Do not their leaders
deprive the rich of their estates and distribute them among
the people; at the same time taking care to reserve the
larger part for themselves ?
Why, yes, he said, to that extent the people do share.
And the persons whose property is taken from them are com-
pelled to defend themselves before the people as they best can ?
What else can they do ?
And then, although they may have no desire of change,
the others charge them with plotting against the people and
being friends of oligarchy ?
True.
And the end is that when they see the people, not of their
own accord, but through ignorance, and because they are
deceived by informers, seeking to do them wrong, then at last
they are forced to become oligarchs in reality ; they do not
wish to be, but the sting of the drones torments them and
breeds revolution in them.
That is exactly the truth.
Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one
another.
True.
The people have always some champion whom they set
over them and nurse into greatness.
Yes, that is their way.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs ;
when he first appears above ground he is a protector.
Yes, that is quite clear.
How then does a protector begin to change into a tyrant?
Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale
of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus.
What tale?
The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single
human victim minced up with the entrails of other victims is
destined to become a wolf. Did you never hear it ?
Oyes.
And the protector of the people is like him ; having a mob
entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding
the blood of kinsmen; by the favourite method of false
accusation he brings them into court and murders them,
The early days of his 'power. 275
making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue Republic
and lips tasting the blood of his fellow citizens ; some he kills VI11-
and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the
abolition of debts and partition of lands : and after this, what
566 will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands
of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf— that is,
a tyrant ?
Inevitably.
This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the
rich?
The same.
After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of After a time
his enemies, a tyrant full grown. 5e 1S
' J driven out,
That is clear. but comes
And if they are unable to expel him, or to get him back a full-
condemned to death by a public accusation, they conspire to rant.
assassinate him.
Yes, he said, that is their usual way.
Then comes the famous request for a body-guard, which is The body-
the device of all those who have got thus far in their s^^-
tyrannical career — 'Let not the people's friend/ as they say,
'be lost to them.1
Exactly.
The people readily assent ; all their fears are for him — they
have none for themselves.
Very true.
And when a man who is wealthy and is also accused
of being an enemy of the people sees this, then, my friend, as
the oracle said to Croesus,
'By pebbly Hermus' shore he flees and rests not, and is not
ashamed to be a coward V
And quite right too, said he, for if he were, he would never
be ashamed again.
But if he is caught he dies.
Of course.
And he, the protector of whom we spoke, is to be seen, not The protec-
' larding the plain ' with his bulk, but himself the overthrower |°r stand~
of many, standing up in the chariot of State with the reins in the chariot
his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute. of State-
* Herod, i. 55.
T 2
276 His increasing unpopularity.
Republic No doubt, he said.
And now let us consider the happiness of the man, and
also °^ tne ^tate in wnicn a creature like him is generated.
Yes, he said, let us consider that.
At first, in the early days of his power, he is full of smiles,
and he salutes every one whom he meets ; — he to be called
a tyrant, who is making promises in public and also in
private! liberating debtors, and distributing land to the
people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and
good to every one !
Of course, he said.
He stirs up But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest
impover- or treaty> anc^ there is nothing to fear from them, then he is 567
isheshis always stirring up some war or other, in order that the
tion of To be sure.
Has he not also another object, which is that they may be
impoverished by payment of taxes, and thus compelled to
devote themselves to their daily wants and therefore less
likely to conspire against him ?
Clearly.
, And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions
of freedom, and of resistance to his authority, he will have a
good pretext for destroying them by placing them at the
mercy of the enemy ; and for all these reasons the tyrant
must be always getting up a war.
He must.
Now he begins to grow unpopular.
A necessary result.
Then some of those who joined in setting him up, and who
are in power, speak their minds to him and to one another,
and the more courageous of them cast in his teeth what is
being done.
Yes, that may be expected.
He gets And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them ;
braves?13 ^e cannot st°P while he has a friend or an enemy who is
and boldest good for anything.
followers.
And therefore he must look about him and see who is
valiant, who is high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy;
Euripides and the tragedians. 277
happy man, he is the enemy of them all, and must seek Republic
occasion against them whether he will or no, until he has vnl-
made a purgation of the State. SOCRATES,
* . ADEIMANTUS.
Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.
Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians His purga-
make of the body ; for they take away the worse and leave °°f !
the better part, but he does the reverse.
If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.
What a blessed alternative, I said: — to be compelled to
dwell only with the many bad, and to be by them hated, or
not to live at all !
Yes, that is the alternative.
And the more detestable his actions are to the citizens the
more satellites and the greater devotion in them will he
require ?
Certainly.
And who are the devoted band, and where will he procure
them?
They will flock to him, he said, of their own accord, if he
pays them.
By the dog ! I said, here are more drones, of every sort More
and from every land. drones-
Yes, he said, there are.
But will he not desire to get them on the spot ?
How do you mean ?
He will rob the citizens of their slaves; he will then set
them free and enrol them in his body-guard.
To be sure, he said ; and he will be able to trust them best
of all.
What a blessed creature, I said, must this tyrant be; he He puts to
568 has put to death the others and has these for his trusted ^en^anci
friends. lives with
Yes, he said ; they are quite of his sort. wtomh?
Yes, I said, and these are the new citizens whom he has has enfran-
called into existence, who admire him and are his companions, chised-
while the good hate and avoid him.
Of course.
Verily, then, tragedy is a wise thing and Euripides a great Euripides
tragedian. and *e
° tragedians
Why so?
278
The ways and means of the tyrant.
Republic
VIII.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
praise
tyranny,
which is an
excellent
reason for
expelling
them from
our State.
The tyrant
seizes the
treasures
in the
temples,
and when
these fail
feeds upon
the people.
Why, because he is the author of the pregnant saying,
1 Tyrants are wise by living with the wise ; '
and he clearly meant to say that they are the wise whom the
tyrant makes his companions.
Yes, he said, and he also praises tyranny as godlike ; and
many other things of the same kind are said by him and by
the other poets.
And therefore, I said, the tragic poets being wise men will
forgive us and any others who live after our manner if we
do not receive them into our State, because they are the
eulogists of tyranny.
Yes, he said, those who have the wit will doubtless forgive
us.
But they will continue to go to other cities and attract
mobs, and hire voices fair and loud and persuasive, and
draw the cities over to tyrannies and democracies.
Very true.
Moreover, they are paid for this and receive honour — the
greatest honour, as might be expected, from tyrants, and the
next greatest from democracies ; but the higher they ascend
our constitution hill, the more their reputation fails, and
seems unable from shortness of breath to proceed further.
True.
But we are wandering from the subject : Let us therefore
return and enquire how the tyrant will maintain that fair and
numerous and various and ever-changing army of his.
If, he said, there are sacred treasures in the city, he will
confiscate and spend them ; and in so far as the fortunes of
attainted persons may suffice, he will be able to diminish the
taxes which he would otherwise have to impose upon the
people.
And when these fail ?
Why, clearly, he said, then he and his boon companions,
whether male or female, will be maintained out of his father's
estate.
You mean to say that the people, from whom he has
derived his being, will maintain him and his companions ?
Yes, he said ; they cannot help themselves.
But what if the people fly into a passion, and aver that a
Liberty passes into the worst form of slavery. 279
grown-up son ought not to be supported by his father, but Republic
569 that the father should be supported by the son ? The father VIH'
did not bring him into being, or settle him in life, in order ^Ji™us
that when his son became a man he should himself be the They rebel
servant of his own servants and should support him and and then
his rabble of slaves and companions ; but that his son should J^^f
protect him, and that by his help he might be emancipated parent, i.e.
from the government of the rich and aristocratic, as they
are termed. And so he bids him and his companions depart,
just as any other father might drive out of the house a
riotous son and his undesirable associates.
By heaven, he said, then the parent will discover what a
monster he has been fostering in his bosom ; and, when he
wants to drive him out, he will find that he is weak and his
son strong.
Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use
violence ? What ! beat his father if he opposes him ?
Yes, he will, having first disarmed him.
Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged
parent ; and this is real tyranny, about which there can be
no longer a mistake : as the saying is, the people who would
escape the smoke which is the slavery of freemen, has fallen
into the fire which is the tyranny of slaves. Thus liberty,
getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest
and bitterest form of slavery.
True, he said.
Very well; and may we not rightly say that we have
sufficiently discussed the nature of tyranny, and the manner
of the transition from democracy to tyranny ?
Yes, quite enough, he said.
BOOK IX.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
A digres-
sion having
a purpose.
The wild
beast latent
in man
peers forth
in sleep.
The con-
trast of the
temperate
LAST of all comes the tyrannical man ; about whom we stept
have once more to ask, how is he formed out of the 57 1
democratical ? and how does he live, in happiness or in
misery ?
Yes, he said, he is the only one remaining.
There is, however, I said, a previous question which
remains unanswered.
What question ?
I do not think that we have adequately determined the
nature and number of the appetites, and until this is accom-
plished the enquiry will always be confused.
Well, he said, it is not too late to supply the omission.
Very true, I said; and observe the point which I want
to understand : Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and
appetites I conceive to be unlawful; every one appears
to have them, but in some persons they are controlled by the
laws and by reason, and the better desires prevail over them
— either they are wholly banished or they become few and
weak; while in the case of others they are stronger, and
there are more of them.
Which appetites do you mean ?
I mean those which are awake when the reasoning and
human and ruling power is asleep ; then the wild beast
within us, gorged with meat or drink, starts up and having
shaken off sleep, goes forth to satisfy his desires ; and there
is no conceivable folly or crime— not excepting incest or any
other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of forbidden
food — which at such a time, when he has parted company with
all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit.
Most true, he said. .
But when a man's pulse is healthy and temperate, and
when before going to sleep he has awakened his rational
The picture of the democratical man. 281
powers, and fed them on noble thoughts and enquiries, Republic
collecting himself in meditation ; after having first indulged IX'
his appetites neither too much nor too little, but just enough SOCRATES,
' . J ADEIMANTUS.
to lay them to sleep, and prevent them and their enjoyments manwhose
572 and pains from interfering with the higher principle — which passions
he leaves in the solitude of pure abstraction, free to contem- a£e ^^
plate and aspire to the knowledge of the unknown, whether Of reason.
in past, present, or future : when again he has allayed the
passionate element, if he has a quarrel against any one — I
say, when, after pacifying the two irrational principles, he
rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest,
then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least
likely to be the sport of fantastic and lawless visions.
I quite agree.
In saying this I have been running into a digression ; but
the point which I desire to note is that in all of us, even
in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which
peers out in sleep. Pray, consider whether I am right, and
you agree with me.
Yes,. I agree.
And now remember the character which we attributed Recapitu-
to the democratic man. He was supposed from his youth latlon-
upwards to have been trained under a miserly parent, who
encouraged the saving appetites in him, but discountenanced
the unnecessary, which aim only at amusement and ornament?
True.
And then he got into the company of a more refined,
licentious sort of people, and taking to all their wanton ways
rushed into the opposite extreme from an abhorrence of
his father's meanness. At last, being a better man than his
corruptors, he was drawn in both directions until he halted
midway and led a life, not of vulgar and slavish passion, but
of what he deemed moderate indulgence in various pleasures.
After this manner the democrat was generated out of the
oligarch ?
Yes, he said ; that was our view of him, and is so still.
And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you
must conceive this man, such as he is, to have a son, who
is brought up in his father's principles.
I can imagine him.
282 The democratic man passes into the tyrannical.
Republic Then you must further imagine the same thing to happen
to the son which has already happened to the father : — he is
ADE*MANTUS drawn into a perfectly lawless life, which by his seducers is
termed perfect liberty; and his father and friends take
part with his moderate desires, and the opposite party assist
the opposite ones. As soon as these dire magicians and
tyrant-makers find that they are losing their hold on him, they 573
contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over
his idle and spendthrift lusts — a sort of monstrous winged
drone — that is the only image which will adequately describe
him.
Yes, he said, that is the only adequate image of him.
And when his other lusts, amid clouds of incense and
perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of
a dissolute life, now let loose, come buzzing around him,
nourishing to the utmost the sting of desire which they
implant in his drone-like nature, then at last this lord of
the soul, having Madness for the captain of his guard, breaks
out into a frenzy; and if he finds in himself any good
opinions or appetites in process of formation1, and there
is in him any sense of shame remaining, to these better prin-
ciples he puts an end, and casts them forth until he has
purged away temperance and brought in madness to the full.
The tyran- Yes, he said, that is the way in which the tyrannical man
SSX ^ generated.
of lusts and And is not this the reason why of old love has been called
appetites. a tyrant ?
drink I should not wonder.
madness Further, I said, has not a drunken man also the spirit of
SSL aty™t?
forms of He has.
tyranny. ^nd yQU know that a man who is deranged and not right
in his mind, will fancy that he is able to rule, not only over
men, but also over the gods ?
That he will.
And the tyrannical man in the true sense of the word
comes into being when, either under the influence of nature,
or habit, or both, he becomes drunken, lustful, passionate?
O my friend, is not that so ?
1 Or, * opinions or appetites such as are deemed to be good.'
The picture of the tyrannical man. 283
Assuredly. Republic
Such is the man and such is his origin. And next, how
does he live ? SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
Suppose, as people facetiously say, you were to tell me.
I imagine, I said, at the next step in his progress, that there
will be feasts and carousals and revellings and courtezans,
and all that sort of thing ; Love is the lord of the house
within him, and orders all the concerns of his soul.
That is certain.
Yes; and every day and every night desires grow up
many and formidable, and their demands are many.
They are indeed, he said.
His revenues, if he has any, are soon spent.
True.
Then comes debt and the cutting down of his property.
Of course.
When he has nothing left, must not his desires, crowding His desires
in the nest like young ravens, be crying aloud for food ; and become
574 he, goaded on by them, and especially by love himself, who his means
is in a manner the captain of them, is in a frenzy, and would less-
fain discover whom he can defraud or despoil of his property,
in order that he may gratify them ?
Yes, that is sure to be the case.
He must have money, no matter how, if he is to escape
horrid pains and pangs.
He must.
And as in himself there was a succession of pleasures, and He will
the new got the better of the old and took away their rights, fatherland
so he being younger will claim to have more than his father mother,
and his mother, and if he has spent his own share of the
property, he will take a slice of theirs.
No doubt he will.
And if his parents will not give way, then he will try first
of all to cheat and deceive them.
Very true.
And if he fails, then he will use force and plunder them.
Yes, probably.
And if the old man and woman fight for their own, what
then, my friend? Will the creature feel any compunction
at tyrannizing over them ?
284
The early days of the tyrant.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS.
He will pre-
fer the love
of a girl or
a youth to
his aged
parents,
and may
even be
induced
to strike
them.
He turns
highway-
man, robs
temples,
loses all
his early
principles,
and be-
comes in
waking
reality the
evil dream
which he
had in
sleep.
He gathers
followers
about him.
Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his
parents.
But, O heavens ! Adeimantus, on account of some new-
fangled love of a harlot, who is anything but a necessary
connection, can you believe that he would strike the mother
who is his ancient friend and necessary to his very existence,
and would place her under the authority of the other, when
she is brought under the same roof with her ; or that, under
like circumstances, he would do the same to his withered old
father, first and most indispensable of friends, for the sake
of some newly-found blooming youth who is the reverse
of indispensable ?
Yes, indeed, he said ; I believe that he would.
Truly, then, I said, a tyrannical son is a blessing to his
father and mother.
He is indeed, he replied.
He first takes their property, and when that fails, and
pleasures are beginning to swarm in the hive of his soul,
then he breaks into a house, or steals the garments of some
nightly wayfarer ; next he proceeds to clear a temple. Mean-
while the old opinions which he had when a child, and which
gave judgment about good and evil, are overthrown by those
others which have just been emancipated, and are now the
body-guard of love and share his empire. These in his
democratic days, when he was still subject to the laws and to
his father, were only let loose in the dreams of sleep. But
now that he is under the dominion of Love, he becomes
always and in waking reality what he was then very rarely
and in a dream only ; he will commit the foulest murder, or
eat forbidden food, or be guilty of any other horrid act.
Love is his tyrant, and lives lordly in him and lawlessly, 57i
and being himself a king, leads him on, as a tyrant leads a
State, to the performance of any reckless deed by which he
can maintain himself and the rabble of his associates, whether
those whom evil communications have brought in from
without, or those whom he himself has allowed to break
loose within him by reason of a similar evil nature in him-
self. Have we not here a picture of his way of life ?
Yes, indeed, he said.
And if there are only a few of them in the State, and the
The change which comes over him. 285
rest of the people are well disposed, they go away and Republic
become the body-guard or mercenary soldiers of some other IX'
tyrant who may probably want them for a war ; and if there SOCRATES,
J J f J ,.,./• ADEIMANTUS.
is no war, they stay at home and do many little pieces of
mischief in the city.
What sort of mischief?
For example, they are the thieves, burglars, cut-purses,
foot-pads, robbers of temples, man-stealers of the com-
munity; or if they are able to speak they turn informers,
and bear false witness, and take bribes.
A small catalogue of evils, even if the perpetrators of
them are few in number.
Yes,- I said ; but small and great are comparative terms, A private
and all these things, in the misery and evil which they inflict ^uu'itUe
upon a State, do not come within a thousand miles of the harm in
tyrant ; when this noxious class and their followers grow comPan"
numerous and become conscious of their strength, assisted tyrant.
by the infatuation of the people, they choose from among
themselves the one who has most of the tyrant in his own
soul, and him they create their tyrant.
Yes, he said, and he will be the most fit to be a tyrant.
If the people yield, well and good ; but if they resist him,
as he began by beating his own father and mother, so now,
if he has the power, he beats them, and will keep his dear
old fatherland or motherland, as the Cretans say, in sub-
jection to his young retainers whom he has introduced to be
their rulers and masters. This is the end of his passions
and desires.
Exactly.
When such men are only private individuals and before Thebeha-
they get power, this is their character; they associate viourofthe
entirely with their own flatterers or ready tools ; or if they his early
want anything from anybody, they in their turn are equally supporters,
ready to bow down before them : they profess every sort of
576 affection for them ; but when they have gained their point
they know them no more.
Yes, truly.
They are always either the masters or servants and never He is
the friends of anybody ; the tyrant never tastes of true free- a)waxs
dom or friendship.
286
The distance between king and tyrant.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
ADEIMANTUS,
GLAUCON.
master or
servant,
always
treacher-
ous,
unjust,
the waking
reality of
our dream,
a tyrant by
nature, a
tyrant in
fact.
The wicked
are also the
most miser-
able.
Like man,
like State.
The oppo-
site of the
king.
Certainly not.
And may we not rightly call such men treacherous ?
No question.
Also they are utterly unjust, if we were right in our notion
of justice ?
Yes, he said, and we were perfectly right.
Let us then sum up in a word, I said, the character of the
worst man : he is the waking reality of what we dreamed.
Most true.
And this is he who being by nature most of a tyrant bears
rule, and the longer he lives the more of a tyrant he becomes.
That is certain, said Glaucon, taking his turn to answer.
And will not he who has been shown to be the wickedest,
be also the most miserable? and he who has tyrannized
longest and most, most continually and truly miserable ;
although this may not be the opinion of men in general?
Yes, he said, inevitably.
And must not the tyrannical man be, like the tyrannical
State, and the democratical man like the democratical State ;
and the same of the others ?
Certainly.
And as State is to State in virtue and happiness, so is man
in relation to man ?
To be sure.
Then comparing our original city, which was under a king,
and the city which is under a tyrant, how do they stand as to
virtue ?
They are the opposite extremes, he said, for one is the
very best and the other is the very worst.
There can be no mistake, I said, as to which is which, and
therefore I will at once enquire whether you would arrive at
a similar decision about their relative happiness and misery.
And here we must not allow ourselves to be panic-stricken at
the apparition of the tyrant, who is only a unit and may
perhaps have a few retainers about him ; but let us go as we
ought into every corner of the city and look all about, and
then we will give our opinion.
A fair invitation, he replied ; and I see, as every one must,
that a tyranny is the wretchedest form of government, and
the rule of a king the happiest.
The final decision is approaching. 287
And in estimating the men too, may I not fairly make a Republic
577 like request, that I should have a judge whose mind can IXm
enter into and see through human nature? he must not be
like a child who looks at the outside and is dazzled at the
pompous aspect which the tyrannical nature assumes to the
beholder, but let him be one who has a clear insight. May I
suppose that the judgment is given in the hearing of us all
by one who is able to judge, and has dwelt in the same place
with him, and been present at his daily life and known him
in his family relations, where he may be seen stripped of his
tragedy attire, and again in the hour of public danger— he
shall tell us about the happiness and misery of the tyrant
when compared with other men ?
That again, he said, is a very fair proposal.
Shall I assume that we ourselves are able and experienced
judges and have before now met with such a person ? We
shall then have some one who will answer our enquiries.
By all means.
Let me ask you not to forget the parallel of the individual
and the State ; bearing this in mind, and glancing in turn
from one to the other of them, will you tell me their re-
spective conditions ?
What do you mean ? he asked.
Beginning with the State, I replied, would you say that a The State
city which is governed by a tyrant is free or enslaved ? but en ^^
No city, he said, can be more completely enslaved. slaved.
And yet, as you see, there are freemen as well as masters
in such a State ?
Yes, he said, I see that there are — a few ; but the people,
speaking generally, and the best of them are miserably
degraded and enslaved.
Then if the man is like the State, I said, must not the Like a
same rule prevail ? his soul is full of meanness and ^la^' *he
vulgarity — the best elements in him are enslaved ; and full of
there is a small ruling part, which is also the worst and meanness,
, , and the
maddest. ruling part
Inevitably. of him is
And would you say that the soul of such an one is the soul
of a freeman, or of a slave ?
He has the soul of a slave, in my opinion.
288
Happiness and misery of just and unjust.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The city
which is
subject to
him is
goaded by
a gadfly ;
poor;
full of
misery.
Also the
tyrannical
man is most
miserable.
Yet there is
a still more
miserable
being,
the tyran-
nical man
who is a
public ty-
rant.
And the State which is enslaved under a tyrant is utterly
incapable of acting voluntarily ?
Utterly incapable.
And also the soul which is under a tyrant (I am speaking
of the soul taken as a whole) is least capable of doing what
she desires ; there is a gadfly which goads her, and she is
full of trouble and remorse ?
Certainly.
And is the city which is under a tyrant rich or poor ?
Poor.
And the tyrannical soul must be always poor and insati- 578
able?
True.
And must not such a State and such a man be always
full of fear?
Yes, indeed.
Is there any State in which you will find more of lamenta-
tion and sorrow and groaning and pain ? ,
Certainly not
And is there any man in whom you will find more of this
sort of misery than in the tyrannical man, who is in a
fury of passions and desires ?
Impossible.
Reflecting upon these and similar evils, you held the
tyrannical State to be the most miserable of States ?
And I was right, he said.
Certainly, I said. And when you see the same evils in the
tyrannical man, what do you say of him ?
I say that he is by far the most miserable of all men.
There, I said, I think that you are beginning to go wrong.
What do you mean ?
I do not think that he has as yet reached the utmost
extreme of misery.
Then who is more miserable ?
One of whom I am about to speak.
Who is that?
He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading
a private life has been cursed with the further misfortune
of being a public tyrant.
From what has been said, I gather that you are right.
The tyrant like the owner of slaves. 289
Yes, I replied, but in this high argument you should be a Republic
little more certain, and should not conjecture only; for of all IX'
questions, this respecting good and evil is the greatest.
Very true, he said.
Let me then offer you an illustration, which may, I think,
throw a light upon this subject.
What is your illustration ?
The case of rich individuals in cities who possess many In cities
slaves: from them you may form an idea of the tyrant's ^iT
condition, for they both have slaves ; the only difference is slave-
that he has more slaves. owners, and
• /v • they help
Yes, that is the difference. to protect
You know that they live securely and have nothing to
apprehend from their servants ?
What should they fear ?
Nothing. But do you observe the reason of this ?
Yes ; the reason is, that the whole city is leagued together
for the protection of each individual.
Very true, I said. But imagine one of these owners, the But sup-
master say of some fifty slaves, together with his family and J^^^"
property and slaves, carried off by a god into the wilderness, his slaves
where there are no freemen to help him — will he not be in an camed off
into the
agony of fear lest he and his wife and children should be put wilderness,
to death by his slaves ? . what wil1
579 Yes, he said, he will be in the utmost fear. then? Such
The time has arrived when he will be compelled to flatter is. the con~
divers of his slaves, and make many promises to them of the tyrant.
freedom and other things, much against his will — he will
have to cajole his own servants.
Yes, he said, that will be the only way of saving himself.
And suppose the same god, who carried him away, to sur-
round him with neighbours who will not suffer one man to
be the master of another, and who, if they could catch the
offender, would take his life ?
His case will be still worse, if you suppose him4 to be
everywhere surrounded and watched by enemies. He is the
And is not this the sort of prison in which the tyrant will fu^^and
be bound — he who being by nature such as we have described, has to en-
is full of all sorts of fears and lusts? His soul is dainty and
greedy, and yet alone, of all men in the city, he is never of a prison;
u
290
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Miserable
in himself,
he is still
more miser-
able if he
be in a
public
station.
He then
leads a life
worse than
the worst,
in unhappi-
ness,
and in
wicked-
ness.
The um-
pire decides
that
The real tyrant the real slave.
allowed to go on a journey, or to see the things which other
freemen desire to see, but he lives in his hole like a woman
hidden in the house, and is jealous of any other citizen who
goes into foreign parts and sees anything of interest.
Very true, he said.
And amid evils such as these will not he who is ill-governed
in his own person — the tyrannical man, I mean — whom you
just now decided to be the most miserable of all — will not he
be yet more miserable when, instead of leading a private life,
he is constrained by fortune to be a public tyrant ? He has to
be master of others when he is not master of himself: he is
like a diseased or paralytic man who is compelled to pass his
life, not in retirement, but fighting and combating with other
men.
Yes, he said, the similitude is most exact.
Is not his case utterly miserable ? and does not the actual
tyrant lead a worse life than he whose life you determined to
be the worst ?
Certainly.
He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the
real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation
and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind.
He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and
has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know
how to inspect the whole soul of him : all his life long he is
beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, even
as the State which he resembles : and surely the resemblance
holds ?
Very true, he said.
Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse 580
from having power : he becomes and is of necessity more
jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more
impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and
cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that
he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else
as miserable as himself.
No man of any sense will dispute your words.
Come then, I said, and as the general umpire in theatrical
contests proclaims the result, do you also decide who in your
opinion is first in the scale of happiness, and who second,
The first, upon which follows the second trial. 291
and in what order the others follow : there are five of them Republic
in all— they are the royal, timocratical, oligarchical, demo- IX-
cratical, tyrannical. SOCRATES,
GLAUCON
The decision will be easily given, he replied ; they shall
be choruses coming on the stage, and I must judge them in
the order in which they enter, by the criterion of virtue and
vice, happiness and misery.
Need we hire a herald, or shall I announce, that the son the best is
of Ariston [the best] has decided that the best and justest the hafPJ-
, J estandthe
is also the happiest, and that this is he who is the most worst is the
royal man and king, over himself; and that the worst and ^tmiser"
most unjust man is also the most miserable, and that this is This is the
he who being the greatest tyrant of himself is also the prociama-
greatest tyrant of his State ? L°n oflris-
Make the proclamation yourself, he said. ton.
And shall I add, ' whether seen or unseen by gods and
men'?
Let the words be added.
Then this, I said, will be our first proof; and there is
another, which may also have some weight.
What is that ?
The second proof is derived from the nature of the soul : Proof, de-
seeing that the individual soul, like the State, has been [j^f™
divided by us into three principles, the division may, I think, principles
furnish a new demonstration. of the soul.
Of what nature ?
It seems to me that to these three principles three pleasures
correspond ; also three desires and governing powers.
How do you mean ? he said.
There is one principle with which, as we were saying, a
man learns, another with which he is angry ; the third, having
many forms, has no special name, but is denoted by the
general term appetitive, from the extraordinary strength and
vehemence of the desires of eating and drinking and the
other sensual appetites which are the main elements of it ;
581 also money-loving, because such desires are generally satisfied
by the help of money.
That is true, he said.
If we were to say that the loves and pleasures of this (i)The
third part were concerned with gain, we should then be
u 2
2 92 The three classes of men and three kinds of pleasure.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
(2) The
ambitious :
(3) The
principle of
knowledge
and truth.
Each will
depreciate
the others,
but only
the philoso-
pher has
the power
to judge,
able to fall back on a single notion ; and might truly and
intelligibly describe this part of the soul as loving gain or
money.
I agree with you.
Again, is not the passionate element wholly set on ruling
and conquering and getting fame ?
True.
Suppose we call it the contentious or ambitious — would the
term be suitable ?
Extremely suitable.
On the other hand, every one sees -that the principle of
knowledge is wholly directed to the truth, and cares less
than either of the others for gain or fame.
Far less.
' Lover of wisdom/ ' lover of knowledge/ are titles which
we may fitly apply to that part of the soul ?
Certainly.
One principle prevails in the souls of one class of men,
another in others, as may happen ?
Yes.
Then we may begin by assuming that there are three
classes of men — lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, lovers
of gain ?
Exactly.
And there are three kinds of pleasure, which are their
several objects ?
Very true.
Now, if you examine the three classes of men, and ask of
them in turn which of their lives is pleasantest, each will be
found praising his own and depreciating that of others : the
money-maker will contrast the vanity of honour or of learning
if they bring no money with the solid advantages of gold and
silver ?
True, he said.
And the lover of honour — what will be his opinion ? Will
he not think that the pleasure of riches is vulgar, while the
pleasure of learning, if it brings no distinction, is all smoke
and nonsense to him ?
Very true.
The philosopher 'judges all, and is judged of none' 293
And are we to suppose \ I said, that the philosopher sets Republic
any value on other pleasures in comparison with the plea- IX'
sure of knowing the truth, and in that pursuit abiding, ever
learning, not so far indeed from the heaven of pleasure ? because he
Does he not call the other pleasures necessary, under the alone has
idea that if there were no necessity for them, he would e^ritnct
, », J ofthehigh-
rather nor have them ? est plea-
There can be no doubt of that, he replied. sures and is
Since, then, the pleasures of each class and the life of each quainted
are in dispute, and the question is not which life is more or with the
582 less honourable, or better or worse, but which is the more
pleasant or painless — how shall we know who speaks truly ?
I cannot myself tell, he said.
Well, but what ought to be the criterion ? Is any better
than experience and wisdom and reason ?
There cannot be a better, he said.
Then, I said, reflect. Of the three individuals, which
has the greatest experience of all the pleasures which
we enumerated? Has the lover of gain, in learning the
nature of essential truth, greater experience of the pleasure
of knowledge than the philosopher has of the pleasure of
gain?
The philosopher, he replied, has greatly the advantage ;
for he has of necessity always known the taste of the other
pleasures from his childhood upwards : but the lover of gain
in all his experience has not of necessity tasted — or, I should
rather say, even had he desired, could hardly have tasted —
the sweetness of learning and knowing truth.
Then the lover of wisdom has a great advantage over the
lover of gain, for he has a double experience ?
Yes, very great.
Again, has he greater experience of the pleasures of honour,
or the lover of honour of the pleasures of wisdom ?
Nay, he said, all three are honoured in proportion as they
attain their object ; for the rich man and the brave man and
the wise man alike have their crowd of admirers, and as
they all receive honour they all have experience of the-
pleasures of honour; but the delight which is to be found
1 Reading with Grasere and Hermann rf oufytefla, and omitting ovScv, which
is not found in the best MSS.
294 The higher pleasure approved by the higher faculty.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The philo-
sopher
alone hav-
ing both
judgment
and experi-
ence,
the
pleasures
which he
approves
are the true
pleasures :
he places
(1) the love
of wisdom,
(2) the love
of honour,
(3) and
lowest the
love of
gain.
in the knowledge of true being is known to the philosopher
only.
His experience, then, will enable him to judge better than
any one ?
Far better.
And he is the only one who has wisdom as well as ex-
perience ?
Certainly.
Further, the very faculty which is the instrument of judg-
ment is not possessed by the covetous or ambitious man, but
only by the philosopher ?
What faculty ?
Reason, with whom, as we were saying, the decision
ought to rest.
Yes.
And reasoning is peculiarly his instrument ?
Certainly.
If wealth and gain were the criterion, then the praise or
blame of the lover of gain would surely be the most trust-
worthy ?
Assuredly.
Or if honour or victory or courage, in that case the judg-
ment of the ambitious or pugnacious would be the truest ?
Clearly.
But since experience and wisdom and reason are the
judges—
The only inference possible, he replied, is that pleasures
which are approved by the lover of wisdom and reason are
the truest.
And so we arrive at the result, that the pleasure of the
intelligent part of the soul is the pleasantest of the three, 583
and that he of us in whom this is the ruling principle has the
pleasantest life.
Unquestionably, he said, the wise man speaks with authority
when he approves of his own life.
And what does the judge affirm to be the life which is next,
and the pleasure which is next ?
Clearly that of the soldier and lover of honour ; who is
nearer to himself than the money-maker.
Last comes the lover of gain ?
The third trial. 295
Very true, he said. Republic
Twice in succession, then, has the just man overthrown the
unjust in this conflict : and now comes the third trial, which SOCRATES,
- ' * GLAUCON.
is dedicated to Olympian Zeus the saviour : a sage whispers Tnje lga_
in my ear that no pleasure except that of the wise is quite sure is not
true and pure — all others are a shadow only; and surely relative but
this will prove the greatest and most decisive of falls ?
Yes, the greatest ; but will you explain yourself?
I will work out the subject and you shall answer my
questions.
Proceed.
Say, then, is not pleasure opposed to pain ?
True.
And there is a neutral state which is neither pleasure nor
pain?
There is.
A state which is intermediate, and a sort of repose of the
soul about either — that is what you mean ?
Yes.
You remember what people say when they are sick ?
What do they say ?
That after all nothing is pleasanter than health. But then
they never knew this to be the greatest of pleasures until
they were ill.
Yes, I know, he said.
And when persons are suffering from acute pain, you must The states
have heard them say that there is nothing pleasanter than to ££™^n
get rid of their pain ? pleasure
I have. and pain
, . . are termed
And there are many other cases of suffering in which the pleasures or
mere rest and cessation of pain, and not any positive enjoy- pains only
, ~ m relation
ment, is extolled by them as the greatest pleasure ? to their
Yes, he said ; at the time they are pleased and well content opposites.
to be at rest.
Again, when pleasure ceases, that sort of rest or cessation
will be painful ?
Doubtless, he said.
Then the intermediate state of rest will be pleasure and
will also be pain ?
So it would seem.
296
The greater or less reality of pleasure.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Pleasure
and pain
are said to
be states of
rest, but
they are
really
motions.
All plea-
sures are
not merely
cessations
of pains, or
pains of
pleasures ;
e.g. the
pleasures of
smell are
not.
But can that which is neither become both ?
I should say not.
And both pleasure and pain are motions of the soul, are
they not ? *
Yes.
But that which is neither was just now shown to be rest 584
and not motion, and in a mean between them ?
Yes.
How, then, can we be right in supposing that the absence
of pain is pleasure, or that the absence of pleasure is
pain ?
Impossible.
This then is an appearance only and not a reality ; that is
to say, the rest is pleasure at the moment and in comparison
of what is painful, and painful in comparison of what is
pleasant; but all these representations, when tried by the
test of true pleasure, are not real but a sort of imposition ?
That is the inference.
Look at the other class of pleasures which have no ante-
cedent pains and you will no longer suppose, as you perhaps
may at present, that pleasure is only the cessation of pain, or
pain of pleasure.
What are they, he said, and where shall I find them ?
There are many of them : take as an example the pleasures
of smell, which are very great and have no antecedent pains ;
they come in a moment, and when they depart leave no pain
behind them.
Most true, he said.
Let us not, then, be induced to believe that pure pleasure
is the cessation of pain, or pain of pleasure.
No.
Still, the more numerous and violent pleasures which reach
the soul through the body are generally of this sort — they
are reliefs of pain.
That is true.
And the anticipations of future pleasures and pains are of
a like nature ?
Yes.
Shall I give you an illustration of them ?
Let me hear.
The illusion of relativeness. 297
You would allow, I said, that there is in nature an upper Republic
and lower and middle region ? IX'
I Should.
And if a person were to go from the lower to the middle
, . . . , Illustra-
region, would he not imagine that he is going up ; and he tions of the
who is standing in the middle and sees whence he has come, unrealitY
would imagine that he is already in the upper region, if he pleasures.
has never seen the true upper world ?
To be sure, he said ; how can he think otherwise ?
But if he were taken back again he would imagine, and
truly imagine, that he was descending ?
No doubt.
All that would arise, out of his ignorance of the true upper
and middle and lower regions ?
Yes.
Then can you wonder that persons who are inexperienced
in the truth, as they have wrong ideas about many other things,
should also have wrong ideas about pleasure and pain and
the intermediate state ; so that when they are only being
585 drawn towards the painful they feel pain and think the pain
which they experience to be real, and in like manner, when
drawn away from pain to the neutral or intermediate state,
they firmly believe that they have reached the goal of satiety
and pleasure ; they, not knowing pleasure, err in contrasting
pain with the absence of pain, which is like contrasting black
with grey instead of white — can you wonder, I say, at this ?
No, indeed ; I should be much more disposed to wonder
at the opposite.
Look at the matter thus : — Hunger, thirst, and the like,
are inanitions of the bodily state ?
Yes.
And ignorance and folly are inanitions of the soul ?
True.
And food and wisdom are the corresponding satisfactions
of either ?
Certainly.
And is the satisfaction derived from that which has less or The intei-
from that which has more existence the truer ? lectual
/-i p i'ii more real
Clearly, from that which has more. than the
What classes of things have a greater share of pure sensual.
298 The body having less of truth and reality than the mind,
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The plea-
sures of the
sensual and
also of the
passionate
element are
unreal and
mixed.
existence in your judgment— those of which food and drink
and condiments and all kinds of sustenance are examples, or
the class which contains true opinion and knowledge and
mind and all the different kinds of virtue ? Put the question in
this way:— Which has a more pure being— that which is
concerned with the invariable, the immortal, and the true, and
is of such a nature, and is found in such natures ; or that
which is concerned with and found in the variable and
mortal, and is itself variable and mortal ?
Far purer, he replied, is the being of that which is con-
cerned with the invariable.
And does the essence of the invariable partake of know-
ledge in the same degree as of essence ?
Yes, of knowledge in the same degree.
And of truth in the same degree ?
Yes.
And, conversely, that which has less of truth will also have
less of essence ?
Necessarily.
Then, in general, those kinds' of things which are in the
service of the body have less of truth and essence than those
which are in the service of the soul ?
Far less.
And has not the body itself less of truth and essence than
the soul ?
Yes.
What is filled with more real existence, and actually has a
more real existence, is more really filled than that which is
filled with less real existence and is less real ?
Of course.
And if there be a pleasure in being filled with that which
is according to nature, that which is more really filled with
more real being will more really and truly enjoy true
pleasure ; whereas that which participates in less real being
will be less truly and surely satisfied, and will participate in
an illusory and less real pleasure ?
Unquestionably.
Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are 586
always busy with gluttony and sensuality, go down and
up again as far as the mean ; and in this region they move at
bodily pleasures are less trite and real than mental ones. 299 <
random throughout life, but they never pass into the true Republic
upper world ; thither they neither look, nor do they ever find *X'
their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do SOCRATES,
they taste of pure and abiding pleasure. Like cattle, with
their eyes always looking down and their heads stooping to
the earth, that is, to the dining-table, they fatten and feed and
breed, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick
and butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made
of iron ; and they kill one another by reason of their insatiable
lust. For they fill themselves with that which is not
substantial, and the part of themselves which they fill is also
unsubstantial and incontinent.
Verily, Socrates, said Glaucon, you describe the life of the
many like an oracle.
Their pleasures are mixed with pains — how can they be
otherwise ? For they are mere shadows and pictures of the
true, and are coloured by contrast, which exaggerates both
light and shade, and so they implant in the minds of fools
insane desires of themselves ; and they are fought about as
Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of
Helen at Troy in ignorance of the truth.
Something of that sort must inevitably happen.
And must not the like happen with the spirited or
passionate element of the soul? Will not the passionate
man who carries his passion into action, be in the like case,
whether he is envious and ambitious, or violent and con-
tentious, or angry and discontented, if he be seeking to attain
honour and victory and the satisfaction of his anger without
reason or sense ?
Yes, he said, the same will happen with the spirited element
also.
Then may we not confidently assert that the lovers of Both kinds
money and honour, when they seek their pleasures under the ^eltS^ed
guidance and in the company of reason and knowledge, and in the high-
pursue after and win the pleasures which wisdom shows es^de&ree
when the
them, will also have the truest pleasures in the highest degree desires
which is attainable to them, inasmuch as they follow truth ; ^hich seek
7 them are
and they will have the pleasures which are natural to them, under the
if that which is best for each one is also most natural to him? guidance
of reason.
Yes, certainly; the best is the most natural.
300
The pleasures of the king and the tyrant.
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The mea-
sure of the
interval
which
separates
the king
from the
tyrant,
And when the whole soul follows the philosophical prin-
ciple, and there is no division, the several parts are just,
and do each of them their own business, and enjoy severally 587
the best and truest pleasures of which they are capable ?
Exactly.
But when either of the two other principles prevails, it fails
in attaining its own pleasure, and compels the rest to pursue
after a pleasure which is a shadow only and which is not
their own ?
True.
And the greater the interval which separates them from
philosophy and reason, the more strange and illusive will be
the pleasure ?
Yes.
And is not that farthest from reason which is at the greatest
distance from law and order ?
Clearly.
And the lustful and tyrannical desires are, as we saw, at the
greatest distance ?
Yes.
And the royal and orderly desires are nearest ?
Yes.
Then the tyrant will live at the greatest distance from true
or natural pleasure, and the king at the least ?
Certainly.
But if so, the tyrant will live most unpleasantly, and the
king most pleasantly ?
Inevitably.
Would you know the measure of the interval which
separates them?
Will you tell me ?
There appear to be three pleasures, one genuine and two
spurious : now the transgression of the tyrant reaches a point
beyond the spurious ; he has run away from the region of
law and reason, and taken up his abode with certain slave
pleasures which are his satellites, and the measure of his
inferiority can only be expressed in a figure.
How do you mean ?
I assume, I said, that the tyrant is in the third place from
the oligarch ; the democrat was in the middle ?
The interval by which they are separated. 301
Yes. Republic
ry
And if there is truth in what has preceded, he will be
wedded to an image of pleasure which is thrice removed as SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
to truth from the pleasure of the oligarch ?
He will.
And the oligarch is third from the royal ; since we count
as one royal and aristocratical ?
Yes, he is third.
Then the tyrant is removed from true pleasure by the
space of a number which is three times three ?
Manifestly.
The shadow then of tyrannical pleasure determined by the expressed
number of length will be a plane figure. undf the
. symbol of
Certainly. acubecor-
And if you raise the power and make the plane a solid, responding
-i . i • rr» i > • i i i i to the num-
there is no difficulty in seeing how vast is the interval by ber72o
which the tyrant is parted from the king.
Yes ; the arithmetician will easily do the sum.
Or if some person begins at the other end and measures
the interval by which the king is parted from the tyrant in
truth of pleasure, he will find him, when the multiplication is
completed, living 729 times more pleasantly, and the tyrant
more painfully by this same interval.
What a wonderful calculation ! And how enormous is the
588 distance which separates the just from the unjust in regard to
pleasure and pain !
Yet a true calculation, I said, and a number which nearly which is
concerns human life, if human beings are concerned with nearly^Q
' number of
days and nights and months and years \ days and
Yes, he said, human life is certainly concerned with them. mghts m a
Then if the good and just man be thus superior in pleasure
to the evil and unjust, his superiority will be infinitely greater
in propriety of life and in beauty and virtue ?
Immeasurably greater.
Well, I said, and now having arrived at this stage of the Refutation
argument, we may revert to the words which brought us ofThra-
. , TIT . ... symachus.
hither : Was not some one saying that injustice was a gain
to the perfectly unjust who was reputed to be just ?
Yes, that was said.
1 729 nearly equals the number of days and nights in the year.
302
The ideal image of the soul, comprehending
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The triple
animal who
has out-
wardly the
image of a
man.
Will any
one say
that we
should
strengthen
the monster
and the
lion at the
expense of
the man ?
Now then, having determined the power and quality of
justice and injustice, let us have a little conversation with
him.
What shall we say to him ?
Let us make an image of the soul, that he may have his
own wo'rds presented before his eyes.
Of what sort?
An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of
ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus,
and there are many others in which two or more different
natures are said to grow into one.
There are said to have been such unions.
Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous,
many-headed monster, having a ring of heads of all manner
of beasts, tame and wild, which he is able to generate and
metamorphose at will.
You suppose marvellous powers in the artist; but, as
language is more pliable than wax or any similar substance,
let there be such a model as you propose.
Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion,
and a third of a man, the second smaller than the first, and
the third smaller than the second.
That, he said, is an easier task ; and I have made them as
you say.
And now join them, and let the three grow into one.
That has been accomplished.
Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of
a man, so that he who is not able to look within, and sees
only the outer hull, may believe the beast to be a single
human creature.
I have done so, he said.
And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the
human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let
us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to
feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and
the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, 589
who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy
of either of the other two ; and he is not to attempt to familiarize
or harmonize them with one another — he ought rather to
suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another.
a many-headed monster, a lion, a man. 303
Certainly, he said ; that is what the approver of injustice Republic
says. IX'
To him the supporter of justice makes answer that he
should ever so speak and act .as to give the man within him
in some way or other the most complete mastery over the
entire human creature. He should watch over the many-
headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering and culti-
vating the gentle qualities, and preventing the wild ones from
growing ; he should be making the lion-heart his ally, and in
common care of them all should be uniting the several parts
with one another and with himself.
Yes, he said, that is quite what the maintainer of justice
will say.
And so from every point of view, whether of pleasure,
honour, or advantage, the approver of justice is right and
speaks the truth, and the disapprover is wrong and false and
ignorant ?
Yes, from every point of view.
Come, now, and let us gently reason with the unjust, who For the
is not intentionally in error. ' Sweet Sir/ we will say to him, £°^e JJ?""
'what think you of things esteemed noble and ignoble? Is jectsthe
not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or beast to the
• • • man, the
rather to the god in man; and the ignoble that which ignoble the
subjects the man to the beast?' He can hardly avoid man to the
saying Yes — can he now?
Not if he has any regard for my opinion.
But, if he agree so far, we may ask him to answer another
question : ' Then how would a man profit if he received gold
and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest
part of him to the worst ? Who can imagine that a man who A man
sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if would not
he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would gainer if he
be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he soldhis
i -» A i MI i i .11 child : how
received? And will any one say that he is not a miserable much worse
590 caitiff who remorselessly sells his own divine being to that to sel1 his
which is most godless and detestable? Eriphyle took the
necklace as the price of her husband's life, but he is taking a
bribe in order to compass a worse ruin.'
Yes, said Glaucon, far worse — I will answer for him.
Has not the intemperate been censured of old, because in
304
Shall we enslave the better to the worse,
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Proofs :—
(i) Men are
blamed for
the predo-
minance of
the lower
nature,
as well as
for the
meanness
of their
employ-
ments and
character :
(2) It is ad-
mitted that
every one
should be
the servant
of a divine
rule, or at
any rate be
kept under
control by
an external
authority :
(3) The
care taken
of children
shows that
we seek to
establish
in them a
higher
principle.
him the huge multiform monster is allowed to be too much at
large ?
Clearly.
And men are blamed for pride and bad temper when the
lion and serpent element in them disproportionately grows
and gains strength ?
Yes.
And luxury and softness are blamed, because they relax
and weaken this same creature, and make a coward of him ?
Very true.
And is not a man reproached for flattery and meanness
who subordinates the spirited animal to the unruly monster,
and, for the sake of money, of which he can never have
enough, habituates him in the days of his youth to be trampled
in the mire, and from being a lion to become a monkey ?
True, he said.
And why are mean employments and manual arts a re-
proach? Only because they imply a natural weakness of
the higher principle ; the individual is unable to control the
creatures within him, but has to court them, and his great
study is how to flatter them.
Such appears to be the reason.
And therefore, being desirous of placing him under a rule
like that of the best, we say that he ought to be the servant
of the best, in whom the Divine rules ; not, as Thrasymachus
supposed, to the injury of the servant, but because every one
had better be ruled by divine wisdom dwelling within him ;
or, if this be impossible, then by an external authority, in
order that we may be all, as far as possible, under the same
government, friends and equals.
True, he said.
And this is clearly seen to be the intention of the law,
which is the ally of the whole city ; and is seen also in the
authority which we exercise over children, and the refusal to
let them be free until we have established in them a principle
analogous to the constitution of a state, and by cultivation of 59*
this higher element have set up in their hearts a guardian
and ruler like our own, and when this is done they may go
their ways.
Yes, he said, the purpose of the law is manifest.
or control the worse by the better? 305
From what point of view, then, and on what ground can Republic
we say that a man is profited by injustice or intemperance or IX'
other baseness, which will make him a worse man, even SOCRATES.
though he acquire money or power by his wickedness ?
From no point of view at all.
What shall he profit, if his injustice be undetected and
unpunished ? He who is undetected only gets worse, whereas
he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his
nature silenced and humanized ; the gentler element in him
is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by The wise
the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom, more ^^5
than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength energies in
and health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than {J^fJ^
the body. ing the
Certainly, he said. nobler eje'
J% ments of
To this nobler purpose the man of understanding will his nature
devote the energies of his life. And in the first place, an^ ^
he will honour studies which impress these qualities on his his bodily
soul, and will disregard others ? habits-
Clearly, he said.
In the next place, he will regulate his bodily habit and His first
training, and so far will he be from yielding to brutal and health but
irrational pleasures, that he will regard even health as quite harmony of
a secondary matter ; his first object will be not that he may
be fair or strong or well, unless he is likely thereby to gain
temperance, but he will always desire so to attemper the
body as to preserve the harmony of the soul ?
Certainly he will, if he has true music in him.
And in the acquisition of wealth there is a principle of
order and harmony which he will also observe ; he will not
allow himself to be dazzled by the foolish applause of the
world, and heap up riches to his own infinite harm ?
Certainly not, he said.
He will look at the city which is within him, and take heed He will
that no disorder occur in itA such as might arise either from
superfluity or from want ; and upon this principle he will
regulate his property and gain or spend acccording to his
means.
Very true.
And, for the same reason, he will gladly accept and enjoy
x
306
1 The city which is in heaven'
Republic
IX.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
and he will
only ac-
cept such
political
honours
as will not
deteriorate
his cha-
racter.
He has a
city of his
own, and
the ideal
pattern of
this will be
the law of
his life.
such honours as he deems likely to make him a better man ; 592
but those, whether private or public, which are likely to
disorder his life, he will avoid?
Then, if that is his motive, he will not be a statesman.
By the dog of Egypt, he will ! in the city which is his own
he certainly will, though in the land of his birth perhaps not,
unless he have a divine call.
I understand ; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city
of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only;
for I do not believe that there is such an one anywhere on
earth ?
In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it,
methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding,
may set his own house in order \ But whether such an one
exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter ; for he will live
after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any
other.
I think so, he said.
1 Or * take up his abode there.*
BOOK X.
steph. OF the many excellences which I perceive in the order of Republic
' our State, there is none which upon reflection pleases me
better than the rule about poetry. SOCRATES,
r GLAUCON.
To what do you refer ?
To the rejection of imitative poetry, which certainly ought
not to be received; as I see far more clearly now that
the parts of the soul have been distinguished.
What do you mean ?
Speaking in confidence, for I should not like to have my Poetical
words repeated to the tragedians and the rest of the imitative ^^™
tribe— but I do not mind saying to you, that all poetical to the mind
imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers,
and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only
antidote to them.
Explain the purport of your remark.
Well, I will tell you, although I have always from my
earliest youth had an awe and love of Homer, which even
now makes the words falter on my lips, for he is the great
captain and teacher of the whole of that charming tragic
company; but a man is not to be reverenced more than
the truth, and therefore I will speak out.
Very good, he said.
Listen to me then, or rather, answer me.
Put your question.
Can you tell me what imitation is? for I really do not The nature
"
A likely thing, then, that I should know.
596 Why not ? for the duller eye may often see a thing sooner
than the keener.
Very true, he said ; but in your presence, even if I had any
X 2
308
(i) The idea of a bed; (2) the actual bed ;
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The idea is
one, but the
objects
compre-
hended
under it
are many.
The univer-
sal creator
an extraor-
dinary per-
son. But
note also
that every-
body is a
creator in a
sense.
For all
things may
be made by
the reflec-
tion of
them in a
mirror.
faint notion, I could not muster courage to utter it. Will you
enquire yourself?
Well then, shall we begin the enquiry in our usual manner :
Whenever a number of individuals have a common name,
we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or form ; —
do you understand me ?
I do.
Let us take any common instance; there are beds and
tables in the world— plenty of them, are there not ?
Yes.
But there are only two ideas or forms of them — one the
idea of a bed, the other of a table.
True.
And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes
a table for our use, in accordance with the idea — that is our
way of speaking in this and similar instances — but no artificer
makes the ideas themselves : how could he ?
Impossible.
And there is another artist, — I should like to know what
you would say of him.
Who is he ?
One who is the maker of all the works of all other workmen.
What an extraordinary man !
Wait a little, and there will be more reason for your saying
so. For this is he who is able to make not only vessels
of every kind, but plants and animals, himself and all other
things— the earth and heaven, and the things which are in
heaven or under the earth ; he makes the gods also.
He must be a wizard and no mistake.
Oh! you are incredulous, are you? Do you mean that
there is no such maker or creator, or that in one sense there
might be a maker of all these things but in another not ? Do
you see that there is a way in which you could make them all
yourself?
What way ?
An easy way enough; or rather, there are many ways
in which the feat might be quickly and easily accomplished,
none quicker than that of turning a mirror round and round
— you would soon enough make the sun and the heavens,
and the earth and yourself, and other animals and plants, and
(3) the imitation of a bed.- 309
all the other things of which we were just now speaking, in Republic
the mirror.
Yes, he said ; but they would be appearances only*
Very good, I said, you are coming to the point now. And
the painter too is, as I conceive, just such another — a creator an appear-
of appearances, is he not ? anceonly:
f£f and the
)I Course* painter too
But then I suppose you will say that what he creates is is a maker
untrue. And yet there is a sense in which the painter also
creates a bed ?
Yes, he said, but not a real bed.
597 And what of the maker of the bed ? were you not saying
that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view,
is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed ?
Yes, I did.
Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot
make true existence, but only some semblance of existence ;
and if 'any one were to say that the work of the maker of the
bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could
hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth.
At any rate, he replied, philosophers would say that he
was not speaking the truth*.
No wonder, then, that his work too is an indistinct ex-
pression of truth.
No wonder.
Suppose now that by the light of the examples just offered
we enquire who this imitator is ?
If you please.
Well then, here are three beds : one existing in nature, Three beds
which is made by God, as I think that we may say — for
no one else can be the maker ? beds.
No.
There is another which is the work of the carpenter ?
Yes.
And the work of the painter is a third ?
Yes.
Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists
who superintend them : God, the maker of the bed, and the
painter ?
Yes, there are three of them.
3io
God, the carpenter,
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
(i) The
creator.
God could
only make
one bed ;
if he made
two, a third
would still
appear be-
hind them.
(2) The
human
maker.
(3) The imi-
tator, i.e.
the painter
or poet,
God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed
in nature and one only ; two or more such ideal beds neither
ever have been nor ever will be made by God.
Why is that ?
Because even if He had made but two, a third would still
appear behind them which both of them would have for
their idea, and that would be the ideal bed and not the
two others.
Very true, he said.
God knew this, and He desired to be the real maker of a
real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and
therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by
nature one only.
So we believe.
Shall we, then, speak of Him as the natural author or
maker of the bed ?
Yes, he replied ; inasmuch as by the natural process of
creation He is the author of this and of all other things.
And what shall we say of the carpenter — is not he also the
maker of the bed ?
Yes.
But would you call the painter a creator and maker ?
Certainly not.
Yet if he is not the maker, what is he in relation to the bed ?
I think, he said, that we may fairly designate him as the
imitator of that which the others make.
Good, I said; then you call him who is third in the
descent from nature an imitator ?
Certainly, he said.
And the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all
other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from
the truth ?
That appears to be so.
Then about the imitator we are agreed. And what about
the painter ? — I would like to know whether he may be 598
thought to imitate that which originally exists in nature, or
only the creations of artists ?
The latter.
As they are or as they appear ? you have still to determine
this.
the painter or poet. 311
What do you mean ? Republic
I mean, that you may look at a bed from different points of
view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view,
and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference whose art
in reality. And the same of all things. is one of
Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent. oTapp^r-
Now let me ask you another question : Which is the art of ance and a
painting designed to be— an imitation of things as they are, *°|Jf0^y
or as they appear — of appearance or of reality ? from the
Of appearance. truth-
Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and Any one
can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part ^inhtTs
of them, and that part an image. For example : A painter does only a
will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he v^ ^a11
knows nothing of their arts ; and, if he is a good artist, he them.
may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows
them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they
will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.
Certainly.
And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man Any one
who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody ^sp^~
knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of ac- know all
curacy than any other man — whoever tells us this, I think things is
. ignorant
that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is Of the very
likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom nature of
he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he him-
self was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and
ignorance and imitation.
Most true.
And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, And he
and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all butes^udi
things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, universal
for that the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows j^^16*^
his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can is similarly
never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also deceived-
there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have
come across imitators and been deceived by them ; they
may not have remembered when they saw their works that
599 these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and
could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth,
312
A question to be asked of Homer :
Republic
He who
would not
makethe
if Homer
legislator*1
or general,
or inventor,
because they are appearances only and not realities ? Or,
after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the
tnmgs about which they seem to the many to speak so well ?
The question, he said, should by all means be considered.
Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make
tne original as we^ as tne image, he would seriously devote
himself to the image-making branch ? Would he allow imi-
tation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had
nothing higher in him ?
I should say not.
The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be
interested in realities and not in imitations; and would desire
to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair ; and,
instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer
to be the theme of them.
Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much
greater honour and profit
Then, I said, we must put a question to. Homer; not about
medicine, or any of the arts to which his poems only inci-
dentally refer : we are not going to ask him, or any other
pOet^ Aether he has cured patients like Asclepius, or left
behind him a school of medicine such as the Asclepiads were,
or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts at
second-hand ; but we have a right to know respecting military
tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest
subjects of his poems, and we may fairly ask him about them.
' Friend Homer/ then we say to him, ' if you are only in the
second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not
in the third — not an image maker or imitator — an4 if you are
able to discern what pursuits make men better or worse in
private or public life, tell us what State was ever better
governed by your help ? The good order of Lacedaemon is
due to Lycurgus, and many other cities great and small have
been similarly benefited by others ; but who says that you
have been a good legislator to them and have done them any
good ? Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon
who is renowned among us ; but what city has anything to say
about you ?' Is there any city which he might name?
I think not, said Glaucon ; not even the Homerids them-
selves pretend that he was a legislator.
What good have you ever done ? 313
600 Well, but is there any war on record which was carried on Republic
successfully by him, or aided by his counsels, when he was X'
alive ? SOCRATES,
. GLAUCON.
There is not.
Or is there any invention * of his, applicable to the arts or
to human life, such as Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the
Scythian, and other ingenious men have conceived, which is
attributed to him ?
There is absolutely nothing of the kind.
But, if Homer never did any public service, was he privately
a guide or teacher of any? Had he in his lifetime friends
who loved to associate with him, and who handed down
to posterity an Homeric way of life, such as was established
by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his wisdom,
and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the
order which was named after him ?
Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely>
Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer> that child of
flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more
justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was
greatly neglected by him and others in his own day when he
was alive ?
Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, or had done
Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate and ^^J°§,e
improve mankind — if he had possessed knowledge and not improve-
been a mere imitator — can you imagine, I say, that he would r l* of
not have had many followers, and been honoured and loved he would'
by them ? Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of Ceos, and not have
a host of others, have only to whisper to their contemporaries : iowed to
'You will never be able to manage either your own house starve-
or your own State until you appoint us to be your ministers
of education y — and this ingenious device of theirs has such
an effect in making men love them that their companions
all but carry them about on their shoulders. And is it
conceivable that the contemporaries of Homer, or again of
Hesiod, would have allowed either of them to go about as
rhapsodists, if they had really been able to make mankind
virtuous ? Would they not have been as unwilling to part
with them as with gold, and have compelled them to stay
1 Omitting ek.
Homer and the poets are mere imitators:
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The poets,
like the
painters,
are but imi-
tators ;
they know
nothing of
true exist-
ence.
at home with them ? Or, if the master would not stay, then
the disciples would have followed him about everywhere,
until they had got education enough ?
Yes, Socrates, that, I think, is quite true.
Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals,
beginning with Homer, are only imitators ; they copy images
of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach ? The 601
poet is like a painter who, as we have already observed,
will make a likeness of a cobbler though he understands
nothing of cobbling ; and his picture is good enough for those
who know no more than he does, and judge only by colours
and figures.
Quite so.
In like manner the poet with his words and phrases1
may be said to lay on the colours of the several arts, himself
understanding their nature only enough to imitate them ; and
other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only
from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or
of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and harmony
and rhythm, he speaks very well — such is the sweet influence
which melody and rhythm by nature have. And I think that
you must have observed again and again what a poor appear-
ance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours
which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
Yes, he said.
They are like faces which were never really beautiful, but
only blooming ; and now the bloom of youth has passed
away from them ?
Exactly.
Here is another point : The imitator or maker of the image
knows nothing of true existence ; he knows appearances only.
Am I not right ?
Yes.
Then let us have a clear understanding, and not be satisfied
with half an explanation.
Proceed.
Of the painter we say that he will paint reins, and he will
paint a bit ?
Yes.
1 Or, ' with his nouns and verbs.'
They are not even judges of their own works. 315
And the worker in leather and brass will make them ? Republic
Certainly. X-
But does the painter know the right form of the bit and
reins? Nay, hardly even the workers in brass and leather T,
who make them ; only the horseman who knows how to use has more
them— he knows their right form. knowledge
than the
Most true. imitator.
And may we not say the same of all things ? but less
fx TI L^ than the
What ? user>
That there are three arts which are concerned with all Three arts,
things : one which uses, another which makes, a third which us"??'
imitates them ? imitating.
Yes.
And the excellence or beauty or truth of every structure, Goodness
animate or inanimate, and of every action of man, is relative reia^vfto
to the use for which nature or the artist has intended them, use ; hence
rprue the maker
of them is
Then the user of them must have the greatest ex- instructed
perience of them, and he must indicate to the maker the b7 the user.
good or bad qualities which develop themselves in use ;
for example, the flute-player will tell the flute-maker which
of his flutes is satisfactory to the performer; he will tell
him how he ought to make them, and the other will attend
to his instructions ?
Of course.
The one knows and therefore speaks with authority about
the goodness and badness of flutes, while the other, confiding
in him, will do what he is told by him ?
True.
The instrument is the same, but about the excellence or The maker
badness of it the maker will only attain to a correct belief: and has belief
and not
this he will gain from him who knows, by talking to him and knowledge,
602 being compelled to hear what he has to say, whereas the theimi*ator
•11 i- i j o neither.
user will have knowledge 1
True.
But will the imitator have either ? Will he know from use
whether or no his drawing is correct or beautiful ? or will he
have right opinion from being compelled to associate with
another who knows and gives him instructions about what he
should draw?
316 The imitative, the lower faculty of the soul:
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Imitation
has been
proved to
be thrice
removed
from the
truth.
Neither*
Then he will no more have true opinion than he will
have knowledge about the goodness or badness of his
imitations ?
I suppose not.
The imitative artist will be in a brilliant state of in-
telligence about his own creations?
Nay, very much the reverse.
And still he will go on imitating without knowing what
makes a thing good or bad, and may be expected therefore
to imitate only that which appears to be good to the ignorant
multitude ?
Just so.
Thus far then we are pretty well agreed that the imitator
has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates.
Imitation is only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic
poets, whether they write in Iambic or in Heroic verse, are
imitators in the highest degree ?
Very true.
And now tell me, I conjure you, has not imitation been
shown by us to be concerned with that which is thrice
removed from the truth?
Certainly.
And what is the faculty in man to which imitation is
addressed?
What do you mean ?
I will explain : The body which is large when seen near,
appears small when seen at a distance ?
True.
And the same objects appear straight when looked at out
of the water, and crooked when in the water ; and the
concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colours
to which the sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is
revealed within us ; and this is that weakness of the human
mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light
and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an
effect upon us like magic.
True.
And the arts of measuring and numbering and weighing
come to the rescue of the human understanding — there
the art of measuring, the higher. 3 1 7
is the beauty of them — and the apparent greater or less, Republic
or more or heavier, no longer have the mastery over us,
but give way before calculation and measure and weight ? GLAUCON'
Most true. T
And this, surely, must be the work of the calculating and measuring
rational principle in the soul ? siven to
. man that
To be Sure. he may
And when this principle measures and certifies that some correct the
things are equal, or that some are greater or less than others, appear-0
there occurs an apparent contradiction ? ances.
True.
But were we not saying that such a contradiction is impos-
603 sible — the same faculty cannot have contrary opinions at the
" same time about the same thing ?
Very true.
Then that part of the soul which has an opinion contrary
to measure is not the same with that which has an opinion in
accordance with measure ?
True.
And the better part of the soul is likely to be that which
trusts to measure and calculation ?
Certainly.
And that which is opposed to them is one of the inferior
principles of the soul ?
No doubt.
This was the conclusion at which I was seeking to arrive
when I said that painting or drawing, and imitation in general,
when doing their own proper work, are far removed from
truth, and the companions and friends and associates of a
principle within us which is equally removed from reason,
and that they have no true or healthy aim.
Exactly.
The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, Thepro-
and has inferior offspring. JJgjJ^
Very true. tive arts are
And is this confined to the sight only, or does it extend to ^mt '-
the hearing also, relating in fact to what we term poetry ? timate.
Probably the same would be true of poetry.
Do not rely, I said, on a probability derived from the
analogy of painting; but let us examine further and see
i8
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
They imi-
tate oppo-
sites ;
they en-
courage
weakness
Imitation of grief and passion
whether the .faculty with which poetical imitation is con-
cerned is good or bad.
By all means.
We may state the question thus :— Imitation imitates the
actions of men, whether voluntary or involuntary, on which,
as they imagine, a good or bad result has ensued, and they
rejoice or sorrow accordingly. Is there anything more ?
No, there is nothing else.
But in all this variety of circumstances is the man at unity
with himself— or rather, as in the instance of sight there was
confusion and opposition in his opinions about the same
things, so here also is there not strife and inconsistency in
his life? Though I need hardly raise the question again,
for I remember that all this has been already admitted ; and -
the soul has been acknowledged by us to be full of these
and ten thousand similar oppositions occurring at the same
moment ?
And we were right, he said.
Yes, I said, thus far we were right; but there was an
omission which must now be supplied.
What was the omission ?
Were we not saying that a good man, who has the mis-
fortune to lose his son or anything else which is most dear
to him, will bear the loss with more equanimity than
another ?
Yes.
But will he have no sorrow, or shall we say that although
he cannot help sorrowing, he will moderate his sorrow ?
The latter, he said, is the truer statement.
Tell me : will he be more likely to struggle and hold out 604
against his sorrow when he is seen by his equals, or when he
is alone ?
It will make a great difference whether he is seen or not.
When he is by himself he will not mind saying or doing
many things which he would be ashamed of any one hearing
or seeing him do ?
True.
There is a principle of law and reason in him which bids
him resist, as well as a feeling of his misfortune which is
forcing him to indulge his sorrow ?
leads the spectator to indulge them. 319
True. Republic
X
But when a man is drawn in two opposite directions, to
and from the same object, this, as we affirm, necessarily
implies two distinct principles in him ?
Certainly.
One of them is ready to follow the guidance of the law ?
How do you mean ?
The law would say that to be patient under suffering is they are at
best, and that we should not give way to impatience, as there J^JJJ1^
is no knowing whether such things are good or evil; and hortations
nothing is gained by impatience; also, because no human °fphilos°-
thing is of serious importance, and grief stands in the way
of that which at the moment is most required.
What is most required ? he asked.
That we should take counsel about what has happened, and
when the dice have been thrown order our affairs in the way
which reason deems best ; not, like children who have had a
fall, keeping hold of the part struck and wasting time in setting
up a howl, but always accustoming the soul forthwith to
apply a remedy, raising up that which is sickly and fallen,
banishing the cry of sorrow by the healing art.
Yes, he said, that is the true way of meeting the attacks of
fortune.
Yes, I said ; and the higher principle is ready to follow
this suggestion of reason ?
Clearly.
And the other principle, which inclines us to recollection they recall
of our troubles and to lamentation, and can never have
enough of them, we may call irrational, useless, and
cowardly ?
Indeed, we may.
And does not the latter — I mean the rebellious principle —
furnish a great variety of materials for imitation ? Whereas
the wise and calm temperament, being always nearly equable,
is not easy to imitate or to appreciate when imitated, especi-
ally at a public festival when a promiscuous crowd is as-
sembled in a theatre. For the feeling represented is one to
which they are strangers.
Certainly.
605 Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not
320
The power of sympathy.
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
they minis-
ter in an
inferior
manner to
an inferior
principle in
the soul.
How can
we be right
in sympa-
thizing with
the sorrows
of poetry
when we
would fain
restrain
those of
real life ?
by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect
the rational principle in the soul ; but he will prefer the
passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated ?
Clearly.
And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side
of the painter, for he is like him in two ways : first, inasmuch
as his creations have an inferior degree of truth — in this, I
say, he is like him; and he is also like him in being con-
cerned with an inferior part of the soul ; and therefore we
shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered
State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens
the feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the
evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out
of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imi-
tative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the
irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and
less, hut thinks the same thing at one time great and at
another small — he is a manufacturer of images and is very
far removed from the truth \
Exactly.
But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in
our accusation : — the power which poetry has of harming
even the good (and there are very few who are not harmed),
is surely an awful thing ?
Yes, certainly, if the effect is what you say.
Hear and judge : The best of us, as I conceive, when we
listen to a passage of Homer, or one of the tragedians, in
which he represents some pitiful hero who is drawling out
his sorrows in a long oration, or weeping, and smiting his
breast — the best of us, you know, delight in giving way to
sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the poet
who stirs our feelings most.
Yes, of course I know.
But when any sorrow of our own happens to us, then you
may observe that we pride ourselves on the opposite quality —
we would fain be quiet and patient ; this is the manly part,
and the other which delighted us in the recitation is now
deemed to be the part of a woman.
Very true, he said.
1 Reading ci5w\oTroiovrra . . .
Poetry is allied to the weaker side of human nature. 321
Now can we be right in praising and admiring another
who is doing that which any one of us would abominate and
be ashamed of in his own person ?
No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable.
606 Nay, I said, quite reasonable from one point of view.
What point of view ?
If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a
natural hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping
and lamentation, and that this feeling which is kept under
control in our own calamities is satisfied and delighted by
the poets ; — the better nature in each of us, not having been
sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the sympathetic
element to break loose because the sorrow is another's ; and
the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to him-
self in praising and pitying any one who comes telling
him what a good man he is, and making a fuss about his
troubles; he thinks that the pleasure is a gain, and why
should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem too ?
Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from
the evil of other men something of evil is communicated
to themselves. And so the feeling of sorrow which has
gathered strength at the sight of the misfortunes of others
is with difficulty repressed in our own.
How very true !
And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous ? There
are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and
yet on the comic stage, or indeed in private, when you hear
them, you are greatly amused by them, and are not at all
disgusted at their unseemliness; — the case of pity is re-
peated ; — there is a principle in human nature which is
disposed to raise a laugh, and, this which you once
restrained by reason, because you were afraid of being
thought a buffoon, is now let out again ; and having stimu-
lated the risible faculty at the theatre, you are betrayed
unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet at
home.
Quite true, he said.
And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the
other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are
held to be inseparable from every action — in all of them
Y
Republic
^TL •
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
We fail to
observe
that a sen-
timental
pity soon
creates a
real weak-
ness.
In like
manner
the love of
comedy
may turn
a man into
a buffoon.
22
The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
Republic
We are
we must
expel him
from our
state,
Apology to
tie poets.
poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying
them up ; she lets them rule, although they ought to be
controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness
and virtue.
I cannot deny it.
Therefore, Glaucon, I said, whenever you meet with any
°^ ^ eul°gists °f Homer declaring that he has been the
educator of Hellas, and that he is profitable for education
ancj for tne ordering of human things, and that you should
J
take him up again and again and get to know him and 607
regulate your whole life according to him, we may love
and honour those who say these things — they are excellent
people, as far as their lights extend; and we are ready
to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and
first of tragedy writers; but we must remain firm in our
conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous
men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into
our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed
muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the
reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever
been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers
in our State.
That is most true, he said.
And now since we have reverted to the subject of poetry,
jet tnjs our Defence serve to show the reasonableness of our
former judgment in sending away out of our State an art
having the tendencies which we have described ; for reason
constrained us. But that she may not impute to us any
harshness or want of politeness, let us tell her that there
is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry; of
which there are many proofs, such as the saying of 'the
yelping hound howling at her lord/ or of one 'mighty in
the vain talk of fools/ and ' the mob of sages circumventing
Zeus/ and the ' subtle thinkers who are beggars after all ' ;
and there are innumerable other signs of ancient enmity
between them. Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet
friend and the sister arts of imitation, that if she will only
prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be
delighted to receive her — we are very conscious of her
charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth.
' What will it profit a man f 323
I dare say, Glaucon, that you are as much charmed by her Republic
as I am, especially when she appears in Homer ?
Yes, indeed, I am greatly charmed. GLAOCM'
Shall I propose, then, that she be allowed to return from
exile, but upon this condition only — that she make a defence
of herself in lyrical or some other metre ?
Certainly.
And we may further grant to those of her defenders who
are lovers of poetry and yet not poets the permission to
speak in prose on her behalf : let them show not only that
she is pleasant but also useful to States and to human life,
and we will listen in a kindly spirit ; for if this can be proved
we shall surely be the gainers — I mean, if there is a use in
poetry as well as a delight ?
Certainly, he said, we shall be the gainers.
If her defence fails, then, my dear friend, like other
persons who are enamoured of something, but put a re-
straint upon themselves when they think their desires are
opposed to their interests, so too must we after the manner
of lovers give her up, though not without a struggle. We Poetry is
too are inspired by that love of poetry which the education
608 of noble States has implanted in us, and therefore we would true,
have her appear at her best and truest ; but so long as she is
unable to make good her defence, this argument of ours shall
be a charm to us, which we will repeat to ourselves while
we listen to her strains; that we may not fall away into the
childish love of her which captivates the many. At all events
we are well aware * that poetry being such as we have de-
scribed is not to be regarded seriously as attaining to the
truth ; and he who listens to her, fearing for the safety of the
city which is within him, should be on his guard against her
seductions and make our words his law.
Yes, he said, I quite agree with you.
Yes, I said, my dear Glaucon, for great is the issue at
stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or
bad. And what will any one be profited if under the influence
of honour or money or power, aye, or under the excitement
of poetry, he neglect justice and virtue ?
1 Or, if we accept Madvig's ingenious but unnecessary emendation dcr6p.tQa,
'At all events we will sing, that ' &c.
Y 2
324
The immortality of the soul.
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
The re-
wards of
virtue ex-
tend not
only to
this little
space of
human life
but to the
whole of
existence.
Everything
has a good
and an evil,
and if not
destroyed
by its own
evil, will
not be
destroyed
by that of
another.
Yes, he said ; I have been convinced by the argument, as
I believe that any one else would have been.
And yet no mention has been made of the greatest prizes
and rewards which await virtue.
What, are there any greater still ? If there are, they must
be of an inconceivable greatness.
Why, I said, what was ever great in a short time ? The
whole period of three score years and ten is surely but a little
thing in comparison with eternity ?
Say rather 'nothing,' he replied.
And should an immortal being seriously think of this little
space rather than of the whole ?
Of the whole, certainly. But why do you ask ?
Are you not aware, I said, that the soul of man is immortal
and imperishable ?
He looked at me in astonishment, and said : No, by
heaven : And are you really prepared to maintain this ?
Yes, I said, I ought to be, and you too — there is no
difficulty in proving it.
I see a great difficulty ; but I should like to hear you state
this argument of which you make so light.
Listen then.
I am attending.
There is a thing which you call good and another which
you call evil ?
Yes, he replied.
; Would you agree with me in thinking that the corrupting
-and destroying element is the evil, and the saving and
improving element the good ?
Yes. 609
And you admit that everything has a good and also an evil ;
as ophthalmia is the evil of the eyes and disease of the whole
body ; as mildew is of corn, and rot of timber, or rust of
copper and iron : in everything, or in almost everything,
there is an inherent evil and disease ?
Yes, he said.
And anything which is infected by any of these evils is
made evil, and* at last, wholly dissolves and dies?
True.
The vice and evil which is inherent in each is the destruction
The proof of immortality. 325
of each ; and if this does not destroy them there is nothing Republic
else that will; for good certainly will not destroy them,
nor again, that which is neither good nor evil. SOCRATES,
" ' GLAUCON.
Certainly not.
If, then, we find any nature which having this inherent
corruption cannot be dissolved or destroyed, we may be
certain that of such a nature there is no destruction ?
That may be assumed.
Well, I said, and is there no evil which corrupts the soul ?
Yes, he said, there are all the evils which we were just now
passing in review : unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice,
ignorance.
But does any of these dissolve or destroy her ? — and here Therefore,
do not let us fall into the error of supposing that the unjust jl^0^
and foolish man, when he is detected, perishes through his destroyed
own injustice, which is an evil of the soul. Take the analogy by morai
of the body : The evil of the body is a disease which wastes certainly
and reduces and annihilates the body; and all the things will not be
~ . . , . , . ., .. . destroyed
of which we were just now speaking come to annihilation by physical
through their own corruption attaching to them and inhering evil,
in them and so destroying them. Is not this true ?
Yes.
Consider the soul in like manner. Does the injustice
or other evil which exists in the soul waste and consume her ?
do they by attaching to the soul and inhering in her at
last bring her to death, and so separate her from the body ?
Certainly not.
And yet, I said, it is unreasonable to suppose that anything
can perish from without through affection of external evil
which could not be destroyed from within by a corruption of
its own ?
It is, he replied.
Consider, I said, Glaucon, that even the badness of food,
whether staleness, decomposition, or any other bad quality,
when confined to the actual food, is not supposed to destroy
the body; although, if the badness of food communicates
corruption to the body, then we should say that the body
6 10 has been destroyed by a corruption of itself, which is
disease, brought on by this ; but that the body, being
one thing, can be destroyed by the badness of food, which
326 The vitality of moral evil.
Republic is another, and which does not engender any natural in-
fection— this we shall absolutely deny ?
SOCRATES, y t
GLAUCON. J
Evil means ^nc*» on tlle same PrmciPle» unless some bodily evil can
the conta- produce an evil of the soul, we must not suppose that the
anTthe^vii Sou^ wn^cn ^s one tnin& can be dissolved by any merely
of the body external evil which belongs to another ?
does not Yes, he said, there is reason in that.
infect the _. .
soul. Either, then, let us refute this conclusion, or, while it
remains unrefuted, let us never say that fever, or any other
Disease, or the knife put to the throat, or even .the cutting up
of the whole body into the minutest pieces, can destroy the
soul, until she herself is proved to become more unholy or
unrighteous in consequence of these things being done to
the body ; but that the soul, or anything else if not destroyed
by an internal evil, can be destroyed by an external one, is
not to be affirmed by any man.
And surely, he replied, no one will ever prove that the
souls of men become more unjust in consequence of death.
But if some one who would rather not admit the immor-
tality of the soul boldly denies this, and says that the dying
do really become more evil and unrighteous, then, if the
speaker is right, I suppose that injustice, like disease, must
be assumed to be fatal to the unjust, and that those who take
this disorder die by the natural inherent power of destruc-
tion which evil has, and which kills them sooner or later,
but in quite another way from that in which, at present, the
wicked receive death at the hands of others as the penalty of
their deeds ?
Nay, he said, in that case injustice, if fatal to the unjust,
will not be so very terrible to him, for he will be delivered
from evil. But I rather suspect the opposite to be the truth,
and that injustice which, if it have the power, will murder
others, keeps the murderer alive — aye, and well awake too ; so
far removed is her dwelling-place from being a house of death.
True, I said ; if the inherent natural vice or evil of the
soul is unable to kill or destroy her, hardly will that which is
appointed to be the destruction of some other body, destroy
a soul or anything else except that of which it was appointed
to be the destruction.
The so^t,l indestructible and therefore immortal. 327
Yes, that can hardly be. Republic
But the soul which cannot be destroyed by an evil, whether A>
611 inherent or external, must exist for ever, and if existing for
ever, must be immortal ?
Certainly.
That is the conclusion, I said; and, if a true conclusion, if the soul
then the souls must always be the same, for if none be ^^le
destroyed they will not diminish in number. Neither will the number
they increase, for the increase of the immortal natures must ^^an
come from something mortal, and all things would thus end crease or
in immortality. diminish.
Very true.
But this we cannot believe — reason will not allow us — any
more than we can believe the soul, in her truest nature, to be
full of variety and difference and dissimilarity.
What do you mean ? he said.
The soul, I said, being, as is now proven, immortal, must
be the fairest of compositions and cannot be compounded of
many elements ?
Certainly not.
Her immortality is demonstrated by the previous argument, The soul, if
and there are many other proofs ; but to see her as she really J^1^ be
is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with should be'
the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her with striPPed °f
J ' J . theacci-
the eye of reason, in her original purity; and then her dents of
beauty will be revealed, and justice and injustice and all eartb-
the things which we have described will be manifested more
clearly. Thus far, we have spoken the truth concerning her
as she appears at present, but we must remember also that
we have seen her only in a condition which may be com-
pared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original image
can hardly be discerned because his natural members are
broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all sorts
of ways, and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed
and shells and stones, so that he is more like some monster
than he is to his own natural form. And the soul which we
behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand
ills. But not there, Glaucon, not there must we look.
Where then ?
At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and
328
Justice, having been shown to be best,
Republic
X.
SOCRATES,
GLAUCON.
Her true
conversa-
tion is with
the eternal.
Having put
aside for
argument's
sake the
rewards of
virtue, we
may now
claim to
have them
restored.
what society and converse she seeks in virtue of her near
kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine ; also how
different she would become if wholly following this superior
principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in
which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells
and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up
around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown 612
by the good things of this life as they are termed : then you
would see her as she is, and know whether she have one
shape only or many, or what her nature is. Of her affections
and of the forms which she takes in this present life I think
that we have now said enough.
True, he replied.
And thus, I said, we have fulfilled the conditions of the
argument1; we have not introduced the rewards and glories
of justice, which, as you were saying, are to be found in
Homer and Hesiod ; but justice in her own nature has been
shown to be best for the soul in her own nature. Let a man
do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gyges or not,
and even if in addition to the ring of Gyges he put on the
helmet of Hades.
Very true.
And now, Glaucon, there will be no harm in further
enumerating how many and how great are the rewards which
justice and the other virtues procure to the soul from gods
and men, both in life and after death.
Certainly not, he said.
Will you repay me, then, what you borrowed in the argu-
ment?
What did I borrow ?
The assumption that the just man should appear unjust
and the unjust just : for you were of opinion that even if the
true state of the case could not possibly escape the eyes of
gods and men, still this admission ought to be made for the
sake of the argument, in order that pure justice might be
weighed against pure injustice. Do you remember ?
I should be much to blame if I had forgotten.
Then, as the cause is decided, I demand on behalf of
justice that the estimation in which she is held by gods and
1 Reading a7reAt/(T<fyi60a.
'all things shall be added to her' in this life, 329
men and which we acknowledge to be her due should now Republic
be restored to her by us ' ; since she has been shown to Xm
confer reality, and not to deceive those who truly possess
her, let what has been taken from her be given back, that so
she may win that palm of appearance which is hers also, and
which she gives to her own.
The demand, he said, is just.
In the first place, I said — and this is the first thing which
you will have to give back — the nature both of the just and
unjust is truly known to the gods.
Granted.
And if they are both known to them, one must be the The just
friend and the other the enemy of the gods, as we admitted ™an !s t!ie
J friend of
from the beginning ? the gods,
True. an.d a11
613 And the friend of the gods may be supposed to receive togefheTfor
from them all things at their best, excepting only such evil his g°°d-
as is the necessary consequence of former sins ?
Certainly.
Then this must be our notion of the just man, that even
when he is in poverty or sickness, or any other seeming
misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good
to him in life and death : for the gods have a care of any one
whose desire is to become just and to be like God, as far as
man can attain the divine likeness, by the pursuit of virtue ?
Yes, he said; if he is like God he will surely not be
neglected by him.
And of the unjust may not the opposite be supposed ? The unjust
Certainly.
Such, then, are the palms of victory which the gods give
the just ?
That is my conviction.
And what do they receive of men ? Look at things as they He may be
really are, and you will see that the clever unjust are in the compared
•'-.''. •• . i i to a runner
case or runners, who run well irom the starting-place to the Wh0 is only
goal but not back again from the goal : they go off at a great g°od at the
pace, but in the end only look foolish, slinking away with
their ears draggling on their shoulders, and without a crown ;
but the true runner comes to the finish and receives the
1 Reading
33°
and yet greater rewards in a life to come.
Republic
Recapitu-
thiiTs mifit
for ears po-
described
The vision
prize and is crowned. And this is the way with the just ; he
who endures to the end of every action and occasion of his
entire Ufe nas a g°°d report and carries off the prize which
men have to bestow.
True.
And now you must allow me to repeat of the just the
klessinSs which you were attributing to the fortunate unjust.
I shall say of them, what you were saying of the others, that
as ^y grow older, they become rulers in their own city
if they care to be; they marry whom they like and give
in marria£e to wnom they will; all that you said of the others
I now say of these. And, on the other hand, of the unjust I
say that the greater number, even though they escape in
their youth, are found out at last and look foolish at the end
of their course, and when they come to be old and miserable
are flouted alike by stranger and citizen ; they are beaten and
then come those things unfit for ears polite, as you truly term
them ; they will be racked and have their eyes burned out, as
you were saying. And you may suppose that I have repeated
the remainder of your tale of horrors. But will you let
me assume, without reciting them, that these things are true ?
Certainly, he said, what you say is true.
These, then, are the prizes and rewards and gifts which are 614
bestowed upon the just by gods and men in this present life,
in addition to the other good things which justice of herself
provides.
Yes, he said ; and they are fair and lasting.
And yet, I said, all these are as nothing either in number or
greatness in comparison with those other recompenses which
await both just and unjust after death. And you ought to hear
them, and then both just and unjust will have received from us
a full payment of the debt which the argument owes to them.
Speak, he said ; there are few things which I would more
gladly hear.
Well, I said, I will tell you a tale ; not one of the tales
which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is
a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian
by birth. He was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards,
when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state
of corruption, his body, was found unaffected by decay, and
The pilgrimage of a thousand years. 331
carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as Republic
he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told x'
them what he had seen in the other world. He said that SocRATES-
when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great the judge-
company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which r
there were two openings in the earth; they were near to-
gether, and over against them were two other openings in
the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were
judges seated, .who commanded the just, after they had given
judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of
them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand ; and
in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by
the lower way on the left hand ; these also bore the symbols
of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, The two
and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would JJf^^n
carry the report of the other world to men, and they bade him and the
hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place. tw° in
earth
Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at through
either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been which
, . , passed
given on them ; and at the two other openings other souls, those who
some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, w.ere begin-
some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And Sosewho
arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a had corn-
long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the ^ig
meadow, where they encamped as at a festival ; and those Th
who knew one another embraced and conversed, the souls ing in the
which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things meadow-
above, and the souls which came from heaven about the
things beneath. And they told one another of what had
happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrow-
615 ing at the remembrance of the things which they had en-
dured and seen in their journey beneath the earth (now the
journey lasted a thousand years), while those from above
were describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceiv-
able beauty. The story, Glaucon, would take too long to
tell ; but the sum was this : — He said that for every wrong The
which they had done to any one they suffered tenfold ; or once Punish-
in a hundred years — such being reckoned to be the length of fold the
man's life, and the penalty being thus paid ten times in a thou- sin-
sand years. If, for example, there were any who had been
Purgatory and hell.
Republic
X.
SOCRATES.
1 Unbap-
tized in-
fants.'
Ardiaeus
the tyrant.
Incurable
sinners.
the cause of many deaths, or had betrayed or enslaved cities
or armies, or been guilty of any other evil behaviour, for each
and all of their offences they received punishment ten times
over, and the rewards of beneficence and justice and holiness
were in the same proportion. I need hardly repeat what
he said concerning young children dying almost as soon
as they were born. Of piety and impiety to gods and parents,
and of murderers *, there were retributions other and greater
far which he described. He mentioned that he was present
when one of the spirits asked another, ' Where is Ardiaeus
the Great?' (Now this Ardiaeus lived a thousand years
before the time of Er : he had been the tyrant of some city of
Pamphylia, and had murdered his aged father and his elder
brother, and was said to have committed many other abomin-
able crimes.) The answer of the other spirit was: * He comes
not hither and will never come. And this, 'said he, 'was one
of the dreadful sights which we ourselves witnessed. We
were at the mouth of the cavern, and, having completed all
our experiences, were about to reascend, when of a sudden
Ardiaeus appeared and several others, most of whom were
tyrants ; and there were also besides the tyrants private in-
dividuals who had been great criminals : they were just, as
they fancied, about to return into the upper world, but the
mouth, instead of admitting them, gave a roar, whenever
any of these incurable sinners or some one who had not
been sufficiently punished tried to ascend; and then wild
men of fiery aspect, who were standing by and heard the
sound, seized and carried them off; and Ardiaeus and others 616
they bound head and foot and hand, and threw them down
and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them along the
road at the side, carding them on thorns like wool, and de-
claring to the passers-by what were their crimes, and that2
they were being taken away to be cast into hell/ And of
all the many terrors which they had endured, he said that
there was none like the terror which each of them felt at that
moment, lest they should hear the voice ; and when there was
silence, one by one they ascended with exceeding joy. These,
said Er, were the penalties and retributions, and there were
blessings as great.
1 Reading avr^xftpas. 2 Reading *ol #TI.
The spindle and whorl of Necessity. 333
Now when the spirits which were in the meadow had Republic
tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to X'
proceed on their journey, and, on the fourth day after, he SOCRATES.
.said that they came to a place where they could see from
above a line of light, straight as a column, extending right
through the whole heaven and through the earth, in colour
resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer ; another
day's journey brought them to the place, and there, in the
midst of the light, they saw the ends of the chains of heaven
let down from above : for this light is the belt of heaven,
and holds together the circle of the universe, like the under-
girders of a trireme. From these ends is extended the spindle
of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn. The shaft
and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and the whorl
is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials.
Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth ; and The whorls
the description of it implied that there is one large hollow ^the™1"
whorl which is quite scooped out, and into this is fitted another spheres of
lesser one, and another, and another, and four others, making
eight in all, like vessels which fit into one another ; the whorls
show their edges on the upper side, and on their lower side
all together form one continuous whorl. This is pierced by
the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of the
eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest,
and the seven inner whorls are narrower, in the following
proportions — the sixth is next to the first in size, the fourth
next to the sixth; then comes the eighth; the seventh is
fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is seventh, last and eighth
comes the second. The largest [or fixed stars] is spangled,
and the seventh [or sun] is brightest ; the eighth [or rnoon]
617 coloured by the reflected light of the seventh ; the second
and fifth [Saturn and Mercury] are in colour like one another,
and yellower than the preceding ; the third [Venus] has the
whitest light; the fourth [Mars] is reddish; the sixth
[Jupiter] is in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle
has the same motion ; but, as the whole revolves in one
direction, the seven inner circles move slowly in the other,
and of these the swiftest is the eighth ; next in swiftness are
the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move together; third in
swiftness appeared to move according to the law of this
334
The exhibition of the lots of human life.
Republic
Ar.
SOCRATES.
The pro-
clamation
of the free
choice.
reversed motion the fourth ; the third appeared fourth and the
second fifth. The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity.;
and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes
round with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight
together form one harmony ; and round about, at equal
intervals, there is another band, three in number, each
sitting upon her throne : these are the Fates, daughters
of Necessity, who are clothed in white robes and have
chaplets upon their heads, Laches^ and Clotho and Atropos,
who accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens
— Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos
of the future ; Clotho from time to time assisting with a
touch of her right hand the revolution of the outer circle
of the whorl or spindle, and Atropos with her left hand
touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis laying
hold of either in turn, first with one hand and then with
the other.
When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to go at
once to Lachesis ; but first of all there came a prophet who
arranged them in order; then he took from the knees of
Lachesis lots and samples of lives, and having mounted a
high pulpit, spoke as follows : ' Hear the word of Lachesis,
the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle
of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you,
but you will choose your genius ; and let him who draws the
first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses
shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honours
or dishonours her he will have more or less of her ; the
responsibility is with the chooser — God is justified/ When
the Interpreter had thus spoken he scattered lots indifferently
among them all, and each of them took up the lot which fell
near him, all but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each 618
as he took his lot perceived the number which he had
obtained. Then the Interpreter placed on the ground before
them the samples of lives ; and there were many more lives
than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There
were lives of every animal and of man in every condition.
And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out the
tyrant's life, others which broke off in the middle and came
to an end in poverty and exile and beggary ; and there were
The peril of choosing. 335
lives of famous men, some who were famous for their form Republic
and beauty as well as for their strength and success in games, X'
or, again, for their birth and the qualities of their ancestors ; SOCRATES.
and some who were the reverse of famous for the opposite
qualities. And of women likewise ; there was not, however,
any definite character in them, because the soul, when
choosing a new life, must of necessity become different.
But there was every other quality, and they all mingled
with one another, and also with elements of wealth and
poverty, and disease and health; and there were mean
states also. And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme
peril of our human state; and therefore the utmost care
should be taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind The com-
of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if per- PIexity of
adventure he may be able to learn and may find some one stances,
who will make him able to learn and discern between good
and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better
life as he has opportunity. He should consider the bearing
of all these things which have been mentioned severally and
collectively upon virtue ; he should know what the effect and their
of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a
particular soul, and what are the good and evil conse- soul.
quences of noble and humble birth, of private and public
station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dullness,
and of all the natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the
operation of them when conjoined ; he will then look at the
nature of the soul, and from the consideration of all these
qualities he will be able to determine which is the better and
which is the worse ; and so he will choose, giving the name
of evil to the life which will make his soul more unjust, and
good to the life which will make his soul more just ; all else
he will disregard. For we have seen and know that this is
619 the best choice both in life and after death. A man must
take with him into the world below an adamantine faith in
truth and right, that there too he may be undazzled by the
desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil, lest, coming
upon tyrannies and similar villanies, he do irremediable
wrongs to others and suffer yet worse himself; but let him
know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on
either side, as far as possible, not only in this life but
336
The peril of choosing.
Republic
X,
SOCRATES.
Habit not
enough
without
philosophy
when cir-
cumstances
change.
The specta-
cle of the
election.
in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happi-
ness.
And according to the report of the messenger from the
other world this was what the prophet said at the time : ' Even
for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live dili-
gently, there is appointed a happy and not undesirable
existence. Let not him who chooses first be careless, and
let not the last despair.' And when he had spoken, he who
had the first choice came forward and in a moment chose the
greatest tyranny ; his mind having been -darkened by folly
and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter
before he chose, and did not at first sight perceive that he
was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children.
But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the
lot, he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice,
forgetting the proclamation of the prophet ; for, instead of
throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he accused
chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself.
Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a
former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue
was a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy. And
it was true of others who were similarly overtaken, that the
greater number of them came from heaven and therefore
they had never been schooled by trial, whereas the pilgrims
who came from earth having themselves suffered and seen
others suffer were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to
this inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a
chance, many of the souls exchanged a good destiny for an
evil or an evil for a good. For if a man had always on his
arrival in this world dedicated himself from the first to sound
philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate in the number
of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy
here, and also his journey to another life and return to this,
instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth
and heavenly. Most curious, he said, was the spectacle —
sad and laughable and strange ; for the choice of the souls
was in most cases based on their experience of a previous 6:
life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus
choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of
women, hating to be born of a woman because they had
The end of the pilgrimage. 337
been his murderers; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras Republic
choosing the life of a nightingale ; birds, on the other hand,
like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men. The SocRATES-
soul which obtained the twentieth1 lot chose the life of a lion,
and this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would
not be a man, remembering the injustice which was done him
in the judgment about the arms. The next was Agamemnon,
who took the life of an eagle, because, like Ajax, he hated
human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the middle
came the lot of Atalanta ; she, seeing the great fame of an
athlete, was unable to resist the temptation : and after her
there followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing
into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts ; and far away
among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was
putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul
. of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened
to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former
toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about
for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man
who had no cares ; he had some difficulty in finding this,
which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody
else ; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done,
the same had his lot been first instead of last, and that he
was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass into
animals, but I must also mention that there were animals
tame and wild who changed into one another and into cor-
responding human natures — the good into the gentle and
the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations.
All the souls had now chosen their lives, and they went in
the order of their choice to Lachesis, who sent with them the
genius whom they had severally chosen, to be the guardian
of their lives and the fulfiller of the choice : this genius led
the souls first to Clotho, and drew them within the revolution
of the spindle impelled by her hand, thus ratifying the
destiny of each ; and then, when they were fastened to this,
carried them to Atropos, who spun the threads and made
621 them irreversible, whence without turning round they passed
beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all
passed, they marched on in a scorching heat to the plain of
1 Reading
Z
338 "What sort of persons ought we to be?'
Republic Forgetfulness, which was a barren waste destitute of trees
and verdure; and then towards evening they encamped
SOCRATES. ^y tne river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can
hold; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain
quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank
more than was necessary ; and each one as he drank forgot
all things. Now after they had gone to rest, about the
middle of the night there was a thunderstorm and earth-
quake, and then in an instant they were driven upwards in
all manner of ways to their birth, like stars shooting. He
himself was hindered from drinking the water. But in what
manner or by what means he returned to the body he could
not say; only, in the morning, awaking suddenly, he found
himself lying on the pyre.
And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not
perished, and will save us if we are obedient to the word
spoken ; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forget-
fulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my
counsel is, that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and
follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the
soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and
every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another
and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like
conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we
receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in
this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which
we have been describing.
INDEX.
A.
ABDERA, Protagoras of, 10. 600 C.
Abortion, allowed in certain cases,
5. 461 C.
Absolute beauty, 5. 476, 479; 6.
494 A, 501 B, 507 B ;— absolute
good, 6. 507 B ; 7. 540 A ; — abso-
lute justice, 5. 479 ; 6. 501 B ; 7.
517 E; — absolute swiftness and
slowness, 7. 529 D ; — absolute
temperance, 6. 501 B ;— absolute
unity, 7. 524 E, 525 E ;— the ab-
solute and the many, 6. 507.
Abstract ideas, origin of, 7. 523.
Cp. Idea.
Achaeans, 3. 389E, 390 E, 393 A,D,
394 A.
Achilles, the son of Peleus, third
in descent from Zeus, 3. 391 C ;
his grief, ib. 388 A ; his avarice,
cruelty, and insolence, ib. 390 E,
391 A, B ; his master Phoenix,
ib. 390 E.
Active life, age for, 7. 539, 540.
Actors, cannot perform both tragic
and comic parts, 3. 395 A.
Adeimantus, son of Ariston, a per-
son in the dialogue, 1. 327 C ; his
genius, 2. 368 A ; distinguished
* at the battle of Megara, ibid. ;
takes up the discourse, ib. 362 D,
368E,376D; 4-4I9A; 6.487 A;
8. 548 E ; urges Socrates to speak
in detail about the community of
women and children, 5. 449.
Adrasteia, prayed to, 5. 451 A.
Adultery, 5. 461 A.
Aeschylus, quoted : —
S. c.T. 451, 8.550 C;
„ 592, 2. 361 B, E ;
„ 593> ^. 362 A ;
Niobe, fr. 146, 3. 391 E ;
„ fr. 151, 2. 380 A;
Xanthians, fr. 159, ib. 381 D ;
Fab. incert. 266, ib. 383 B ;
„ „ 326, 8. 563 C.
Aesculapius, see Asclepius.
Affinity, degrees of, 5. 461.
Agamemnon, his dream, 2. 383 A ;
his gifts to Achilles, 3. 390 E ;
his anger against Chryses, ib.
392 E foil. ; shown by Palamedes
in the play to be a ridiculous
general, 7. 522 D ; his soul be-
comes an eagle, 10. 620 B.
Age, for active life, 7. 539, 540 ;—
for marriage, 5. 460; — for philo-
sophy, 7. 539.
Agent and patient have the same
qualities, 4. 437.
Aglaon, father of Leontius, 4. 439 E.
Agriculture, tools required for, 2.
370 C.
Ajax, the son of Telamon, 10. 620 B ;
the reward of his bravery, 5. 468
D ; his soul turns into a lion, 10.
620 B.
Alcinous, ' tales of,''io. 614 B.
Allegory, cannot be understood by
the young, 2. 378 E.
Ambition, disgraceful, I. 347 B (cp.
7. 520 D) ; characteristic of the
timocratic state and man, 8. 545,
548, 550 B, 553 E ; easily passes
into avarice, ib, 553 E; assigned
Z 2
340
Index.
to the passionate element of the
soul, 9. 581 A ; — ambitious men,
5. 475 A; 6.4856.
Ameles, the river ( = Lethe), 10.
62 1 A, C.
Amusement, a means of education,
4. 425 A ; 7. 537 A.
Anacharsis, the Scythian, his in-
ventions, 10. 600 A.
Analogy of the arts applied to
rulers, I. 341 ; of the arts and
justice, ib. 349 ; of men and
animals, 2. 375 ; 5. 459.
Anapaestic rhythms, 3. 400 B.
Anarchy, begins in music, 4. 424 E
\cp. Laws 3. 701 B] ; in demo-
cracies, 8. 562 D.
Anger, stirred by injustice, 4. 440.
Animals, liberty enjoyed by, in a
democracy, 8. 562 E, 563 C ;
choose their destiny in the next
world, 10. 620 D [cp. Phaedr.
249 B].
Anticipations of pleasure and pain,
9. 584 D.
Aphrodite, bound by Hephaestus,
3-390C.
Apollo, song of, at the nuptials of
Thetis, 2. 383 A; Apollo and
Achilles, 3. 391 A ; Chryses'
prayer to, ib. 394 A ; lord of the
lyre, ib. 399 E ; father of Ascle-
pius, ib. 408 C ; the God of
Delphi, 4. 427 A.
Appearance, power of, 2. 365 B,
366 C.
Appetite, good and bad, 5. 475 C.
Appetites, the, 8. 559 ; 9. 571 (cp.
4- 439)-
Appetitive element of the soul, 4.
439 [cp. Tim. 70 E] ; must be
subordinate to reason and pas-
sion, 4. 442 A; 9. 571 D; may
be described as the love of gain,
9. 5?i A.
Arcadia, temple of Lycaean Zeus
in, 8. 565 D.
Archilochus, quoted, 2. 365 C.
Architecture, 4. 438 C ; necessity of
pure taste in, 3. 401.
Ardiaeus, tyrant of Pamphylia,
his eternal punishment, 10. 615
C,E.
Ares and Aphrodite, 3. 390 C.
Argos, Agamemnon, king of, 3.
393 E.
Argument, the longer and the
shorter method of, 4. 435 ; 6. 504 ;
misleading nature of (Adeiman-
tus), 6. 487 ; youthful love of, 7.
539 \.CP- Phil- 15 E]. For the per-
sonification of the argument, see
Personification..
Arion, 5. 453 E.
Aristocracy (i. e. the ideal state or
government of the best), 4. 445 C
(cp. 8. 544 E, 545 D, and see State) ;
mode of its decline, 8. 546 ; — the
aristocratical man, 7. 541 B ; 8.
544 E (see Guardians, Philoso-
pher, Ruler) : — (in the ordinary
sense of the word), I. 338 D.
Cp. Constitution.
Ariston, father of Glaucon, I. 327 A
(cp. 2. 368 A).
Aristonymus, father of Cleitophon,
I. 328 B.
Arithmetic, must be learnt by the
rulers, 7. 522-526; use of, in
forming ideas, ib. 524 foil. (cp. 10.
602) ; spirit in which it should
be pursued, 7. 525 D ; common
notions about, mistaken, ib. E ;
an excellent instrument of edu-
cation, ib. 526 [cp. Laws 5. 747] ;
employed in order to express the
interval between the king and
the tyrant, 9. 587. Cp. Mathe-
matics.
Armenius, father of Er, the Pam-
phylian, 10. 614 B.
Arms, throwing away of, disgrace-
ful, 5. 468 A ; arms of Hellenes
not to be offered as trophies in
the temples, ib. 470 A.
Army needed in a state, 2. 374.
Art, influence of, on character, 3.
400 foil. ; — art of building, ib. 401
A ; 4. 438 C ; carpentry, 4. 428 C ;
calculation, 7. 524, 526 B ; 10.
Index.
341
602 ; cookery, I. 332 C ; dyeing,
4. 429 D ; embroidery, 3. 401 A ;
exchange, 2. 369 C ; measure-
ment, 10. 602 ; money-making,
I- 33°; & 556; payment, I. 346;
tactics, 7. 522 E, 525 B ; weaving,
3. 401 A; 5. 455 D; weighing,
10. 602 D ; — the arts exercised
for the good of their subject, I.
342, 345-347 \fp- Euthyph. 13] ;
interested in their own perfection,
i. 342 ; differ according to their
functions, ib. 346 ; full of grace,
3. 401 A ; must be subject to a
censorship, ib. B ,; causes of the
deterioration of, 4. 421 ; employ-
ment of children in, 5. 467 A;
ideals in, ib. 472 D ; chiefly useful
for practical purposes, 7. 533 A; —
the arts and philosophy, 6. 495 E,
496 C (cp. supra 5. 475 D, 476 A) ;
— the handicraft arts a reproach,
9. 590 C ; — the lesser arts (re^i/v-
fyw), 5. 475 D ; (re>ta), 6. 495 D ;
— three arts concerned with all
things, 10. 60 1.
Art. [Art, according to the con-
ception of Plato, is not a collection
of canons of criticism, but a subtle
influence which pervades all
things animate as 'well as in-
animate (3. 400, 401). He knows
nothing of ' schools ' or of the
history of art, nor does he select
any building or statue for con-
demnation or admiration. \Cp.
Protag. 311 C, where Pheidias is
casually mentioned as the typical
sculptor, and Meno 91 D, where
Socrates says that Pheidias, ' al-
though he wrought such exceed-
ingly noble works] did not make
nearly so much money by them as
Protagoras did by his wisdom.}
Plato judges art by one test,
* simplicity] but under this he
includes moderation, piirity, and
harmony of proportion; and he
would extend to sculpttire and
architecture the same rigid censor-
ship which he has already ap-
plied to poetry and music (3. 401
A). He dislikes the ' illusions ' of
painting (10. 602) and the l false
Proportions ' given by scitlptors to
their subjects (Soph. 234 E), both
of which he classes as a species of
magic. With more justice he
points out the danger of an ex-
cessive devotion to art; (cp. the
ludicrous pictures of the unmanly
musician (3. 411), and of the
dilettanti who run about to every
chorus (5. 475)). But he hopes
to save his guardians from effe-
minacy by the severe discipline
and training of their early years.
Sparta and Athens are to be
combined \cp. Introduction, p.
clxx] : the citizens will live, as
Adeimantus complains, 'like a
garrison of mercenaries ' (4. 419) ;
but they will be surrounded by
an atmosphere of grace and
beauty, which will insensibly
instil noble and true ideas into
their minds.'}
Artisans, necessary in the state, 2.
370; have no time to be ill, 3.
406 D.
Artist, the Great, 10. 596 [cp. Laws
10. 902 E] ; — the true artist does
not work for his own benefit, I.
346, 347 ; — artists must imitate
the good only, 3. 401 C.
Asclepiadae, 3. 405 D, 408 B ; 10.
599 C.
Asclepius, son of Apollo, 3. 408 C ;
not ignorant of the lingering treat-
ment, ib. 406 D ; a statesman, ib.
407 E ; said by the poets to have
been bribed to restore a rich man
to life, ib. 408 B ; left disciples,
10. 599 C ; — descendants of, 3.
406 A ;— his sons at Troy, ibid.
Assaults, trials for, will be unknown
in the best state, 5. 464 E.
Astronomy, must be studied by the
rulers, 7. 527-530; spirit in which
it should be pursued, ib. 529, 530.
342
Index.
Atalanta, chose the life of an athlete,
10. 620 B.
Athene', not to be considered author
of the strife between Trojans and
Acheans, 2. 379 E.
Athenian confectionery, 3. 404 E.
Athens, corpses exposed outside the
northern wall of, 4. 439 E.
Athlete, Atalanta chooses the soul
of an, 10. 620 B ; athletes, obliged
to pay excessive attention to diet,
3. 404 A ; sleep away their lives,
ibid. ; are apt to become brutal-
ized, ib. 410, 411 (cp. 7. 535 D);—
the guardians athletes of war, 3.
403E,404B; 4.422; 7-52iE; 8.
543 [cp. Laws 8. 830],
Atridae, 3. 393 A.
Atropos (one of the Fates), her
song, 10. 617 C ; spins the threads
of destiny, and makes them irre-
versible, ib. 620 E.
Attic confections, 3. 404 E.
Audience, see Spectator.
Autolycus, praised by Homer, I.
334 A.
Auxiliaries, the young warriors of
the state, 3. 414 ; compared to
dogs, 2. 376 ; 4. 440 D ; 5. 45 1 D ;
have silver mingled in their veins,
3. 415 A. Cp. Guardians.
Avarice, disgraceful, I. 347 B ; for-
bidden in the guardians, 3. 390 E ;
falsely imputed to Achilles and
Asclepius by the poets, ib. 391 B,
408 C ; characteristic of timo-
cracy and oligarchy, 8. 548 A, 553.
Barbarians, regard nakedness as
improper, 5. 452 ; the natural
enemies of the Hellenes, ib. 469
D, 470 C [cp. Pol. 262 D] ; pecu-
liar forms of government among,
8.5440.
Beast, the great, 6. 493 ; the many-
headed, 9. 588, 589; 'the wild
beast within us,' ib. 571, 572.
Beautiful, the, and the good are
one, 5- 452 ; — the many beautiful
contrasted with absolute beauty,
6. 507 B.
Beauty as a means of education, 3.
401 foil. ; absolute beauty, 5. 476,
479 ; 6. 494 A, 501 B, 507 B [cp.
Laws 2. 655 C].
Becoming, the passage from, to be-
ing, 7. 518 D, 521 D, 5250.
Beds, the figure of the three, 10.
596.
Bee-masters, 8. 564 C.
Being and not being, 5. 477 ; true
being the object of the philoso-
pher's desire, 6. 484, 485, 486 E,
490, 5ooC ; 7. 521, 5370 ; 9. 581,
582 C (cp. 5. 475 E; 7- 520 B,
525 ; and Phaedo 82 ; Phaedr.
249 ; Theaet. 173 E ; Soph. 249
D, 254) ; concerned with the in-
variable, 9. 585 C.
Belief, see Faith.
Bendidea, a feast of Artemis, i.
354 A (cp. 327 A, B).
Bendis, a title of Artemis, I. 327 A.
Bias of Priene, I. 335 E.
Birds, breeding of, at Athens, 5.
459-
Blest, Islands of the, 7. 519 C,
540 B.
Body, the, not self-sufficing, I. 341
E ; excessive care of, inimical to
virtue, 3. 407 (cp. 9. 591 D) ; has
less truth and essence than the
soul, 9. 585 D ; — harmony of body
and soul, 3. 4020.
Body", the, and the members, com-
parison of the state to, 5. 462 D,
4646.
Boxing, 4. 422.
Brass (and iron) mingled by the
God in the husbandmen and
craftsmen, 3. 415 A (cp. 8. 547 A).
Breeding of animals, 5. 459.
Building, art of, 3. 401 A; 4-
438 C.
Burial of the guardians, 3. 414 A;
5. 465 E, 469 A; 7- 540 B [cp.
Laws 12. 947].
Index.
343
c.
Calculation, art of, corrects the
illusions of sight, 10. 602 (cp. 7.
524) ; the talent for, accompanied
by general quickness, 7. 526 B.
Cp. Arithmetic.
Captain, parable of the deaf, 6. 488.
Carpentry, 4. 428 C.
Causes, final, argument from, ap-
plied to justice, i. 352 : 6. 491 E,
495 B ;— of crimes, 8. 552 D ; 9.
575 A.
Cave, the image of the, 7. 514 foil.,
532 (cp; 539 E)-
Censorship of fiction, 2. 377; 3.
386-391, 401 A, 408 C; 10. 595
foil. [cp. Laws 7. 801, 81 1] ; of the
arts, 3. 401.
Ceos, Prodicus of, 10. 600 C.
Cephalus, father of Polemarchus, I.
327 B ; offers sacrifice, ib. 328 B,
331 D ; his views on old age, ib.
328 E ; his views on wealth, ib.
330 A foil.
Cephalus [of Clazomenae], 1. 330 B.
Cerberus, two natures in one, 9.
588 C.
Chance in war, 5. 467 E ; blamed
by men for their misfortunes, 10.
619 C.
Change in music, not to be allowed,
4. 424 [cp. Laws 7. 799].
Character, differences of, in men, i.
329 D [cp. Pol. 307] ; in women,
5. 456 ; — affected by the imitation
of unworthy objects, 3. 395 ; —
national character, 4. 435 [cp.
Laws 5. 747] : — great characters
may be ruined by bad education,
6. 491 E, 495 B ; 7. 519 :— faults
of character, 6. 503 [cp. Theaet.
144 B].
Charmantides, the Paeanian, pre-
sent at the dialogue, i. 328 B.
Charondas, lawgiver of Italy and
Sicily, 10. 599 E.
Cheese, 2. 372 C ; 3. 405 E.
Cheiron, teacher of Achilles, 3.
391 C.
Children have spirit, but not reason,
4. 441 A ; why under authority,
9. 590 E;— in the state, 3. 415;
5. 450 E, 457 foil. ; 8. 543 ; must
not hear improper stories, 2. 377 ;
3. 391 C ; must be reared amid
fair sights and sounds, 3. 401 ;
must receive education even in
their plays, 4. 425 A; 7. 537 A
[cp. Laws i. 6436] ; must learn
to ride, 5. 467 [cp. Laws 7. 804 C] ;
must go with their fathers and
mothers into war, 5. 467 ; 7. 537
A : — transfer of children from one
class to another, 3. 415 ; 4. 423 D :
— exposure of children allowed,
5. 460 C, 461 C : — illegitimate
children, ib. 461 A.
Chimaera, two natures in one, 9.
588 C.
Chines, presented to the brave
warrior, 5. 468 D.
Chryses, the priest of Apollo (Iliad
i. ii foil.), 3. 392 E foil.
Cithara, see Harp.
Citizens, the, of the best state, com-
pared to a garrison of mercenaries
(Adeimantus), 4. 419 (cp. 8. 543) ;
will form one family, 5. 462 foil.
See Guardians.
City, situation of the, 3. 415 : —
the 'city of pigs,' 2. 372 :— the
heavenly city, 9. 592 : — Cities,
most, divided between rich and
poor, 4. 422 E; 8. 551 E [cp.
Laws 12. 945 E] : — the game of
cities, 4. 422 E. Cp. Constitution,
State.
Classes, in the state, should be kept
distinct, 2. 374 ; 3. 397 E, 415 A ;
4. 421, 433 A, 434, 44 1 E, 443;
5. 453 (cp. 8. 552 A, and Laws 8.
846 E).
Cleitophon, the son of Aristonymus,
present at the dialogue, I. 328 B ;
interposes on behalf of Thrasy-
machus, ib. 340 A.
Cleverness, no match for honesty,
3. 409 C (cp. 10. 613 C) ; not often
united with a steady character, 6.
344
Index.
503 [cp. Theaet. 144 B] ; needs an
ideal direction, 7. 519 [cp. Laws
7. 819 A].
Clotho, second of the fates, 10. 617 C,
620 E ; sings of the present, ib.
617 C ; the souls brought to her,
ib. 620 E.
Colours, comparison of, 9. 585 A ;
contrast of, ib. 586 C ; — indelible
colours, 4. 429 : — ' colours ' of
poetry, 10. 601 A.
Comedy, cannot be allowed in the
state, 3.394 [cp. Laws 7. 8i6D] ;
accustoms the mind to vulgarity,
10. 606 ; — same actors cannot
act both tragedy and comedy,
3- 395-
Common life in the state, 5. 458,
464 foil. ; — common meals of the
guardians, 3. 416 ; common meals
for women, 5. 458 D [cp. Laws
6. 781; 7. 806 E; 8. 839 D];—
common property among the
guardians, 3. 4i6E; 4. 420 A,
422 D; 5.464; 8. 543.
Community of women and children,
3. 416; 5. 450 E, 457 foil., 462,
464; 8. 543 A [cp. Laws 5. 739
C] ;— of property, 3. 416 E ; 4.
420 A, 422 D ; 5. 464 ; 8. 543 ;—
of feeling, 5. 464.
Community. [The communism of
the Republic seems to have been
suggested by Plato's desire for
the unity of the state (cp. 5. 462
foil.). If 'those ' two small pesti-
lentwords ~, "meum" and "tuum?
which have engendered so much
strife among men and created so
much mischief in the world] could
be banished from the lips and
thoughts of mankind, the ideal
state -would soon be realized. The
citizens would have parents ~,wives,
children, and property in common;
they would rejoice in each others
prosperity, and sorrow at each
other's misfortune; they would
call their rulers not ' lords ' and
'masters] bitt .. 'friends' and
'saviours? Plato is aware that
siich a conception could hardly be
carried out in this world; and
he evades or adjourns, rather
than solves, the difficulty by the
famous assertion that only when
the philosopher rules in the city
will the ills of human life find an
end [cp. Introduction, p. clxxiii].
In the Critias, where the ideal
state, as Plato himself hints
to us (noD), is to some extent
reproduced in an imaginary de-
scription of ancient Attica, pro-
perty is common, but there is no
mention of a community of wives
and children. Finally in the
Laws (5. 739), Plato while still
maintaining the blessings of com-
munism, recognizes the impossi-
bility of its realization, and sets
about the construction of a' second-
best state ' in which the rights oj
property are conceded ; although,
according to Aristotle (Pol. ii. 6,
§ 4), he gradually reverts to the
ideal polity in all except a few
unimportant particulars^
Conception, the, of truth by the
philosopher, 6. 490 A.
Confidence and courage, 4. 430 B.
Confiscation of the property of the
rich in democracies, 8. 565.
Constitution, the aristocratic, is the
ideal state sketched in bk. iv
(cp. 8. 544 E, 545 D) ;— defective
forms of constitution, 4. 445 B ;
8. 544 [cp. Pol. 291 E foil.] ; aris-
tocracy (in the ordinary sense),
I. 338 D ; timocracy or ' Spartan
polity,' 8. 545 foil. ; oligarchy, ib.
550 foil., 554E; democracy, ib.
555 foil., 557 D ; tyranny, ib. 544
C, 562. Cp. Government, State.
Contentiousness, a characteristic of
timocracy, 8. 548.
Contracts, in some states not pro-
tected by law, 8. 556 A.
Contradiction, nature of, 4. 436;
10. 602 E ; power of, 5. 454 A.
Index.
345
Convention, justice a matter of, 2.
359 A.
Conversation, should not be per-
sonal, 6. 500 B.
Conversion of the soul, 7. 518, 521,
525 [cp. Laws 12. 957 E].
Cookery, art of, employed in the
definition of justice, i. 332 C.
Corinthian courtesans, 3. 404 D.
Corpses, not to be spoiled, 5.
469.
Correlative and relative, qualifica-
tions of, 4. 437 foil. [cp. Gorg.
476] ; how corrected, 7. 524.
Corruptio optimi pessima, 6. 491.
Corruption, the, of youth, not to be
attributed to the Sophists, but to
public opinion, 6. 492 A.
Courage, required in the guardians,
2-375; 3- 386, 413 E, 416 E; 4.
429 ; 6. 503 E ; inconsistent with
the fear of death, 3. 386 ; 6. 486
A ; = the preservation of a right
opinion about objects of fear, 4.
429, 442 B (cp. 2. 376, and Laches
193, 195) ; distinguished from
fearlessness, 4. 430 B ; one of the
philosopher's virtues, 6. 486 A,
490 E, 494 A : — the courageous
temper averse to intellectual toil,
ib. 503 D [cp. Pol. 306, 307].
Courtesans, 3. 404 D.
Covetousness, not found in the phi-
losopher, 6. 485 E ; characteristic
of timocracy and oligarchy, 8.
54^, 553 ; = the appetitive ele-
ment of the soul, 9. 581 A.
Cowardice in war, to be punished,
5. 468 A ; not found in the phi-
losopher, 6. 486 B.
Creophylus, 'the child of flesh,'
companion of Homer, 10. 600 B.
Crete, government of, generally
applauded, 8. 544 C ; a timocracy,
ib. 545 B ; — Cretans, naked exer-
cises among, 5. 452 C ; call their
country * mother-land,' 9. 575 E ;
— Cretic rhythm, 3. 400 B.
Crimes, great and small, differently
estimated by mankind, 1 . 344 (cp.
348 D) ; causes of, 6. 491 E,
495 B; 8.5520; 9. 575 A.
Criminals, are usually men of great
character spoiled by bad educa-
tion, 6. 491 E, 495 B ; numerous
in oligarchies, 8. 552 D.
Croesus, 2. 359 C ; 'as the oracle
said to Croesus,' 8. 566 C.
Cronos, ill treated by Zeus, 2. 377 E ;
his behaviour to Uranus, ibid.
Cunning man, the, no match for
the virtuous, 3. 409 D.
Cycles, recurrence of, in nature,
8. 546 A [cp. Tim. 22 C ; Crit.
109 D ; Pol. 269 foil. ; Laws 3.
677].
D.
Dactylic metre, 3. 400 C.
Daedalus, beauty of his works, 7.
529 E.
Damon, an authority on rhythm,
3. 400 B (cp. 4. 424 C).
Dancing (in education), 3. 4126.
Day-dreams, 5. 458 A, 476 C.
Dead (in battle) not to be stripped,
5. 469; judgment of the dead,
10. 615.
Death, the approach of, brings no
terror to the aged, i. 330 E ; the
guardians must have no fear of,
3- 386, 387 (cp. 6. 486 C) ; prefer-
able to slavery, 3. 387 A.
Debts, abolition of, proclaimed by
demagogues, 8. 565 E, 566 E.
Delphi, religion left to the god at,
4. 427 A (cp. 5. 461 E, 469 A ; 7.
540 B).
Demagogues, 8. 564, 565.
Democracy, I. 338 D ; spoken of
under the parable of the captain
and the mutinous crew, 6. 488 ;
democracy and philosophy, ib.
494, 500; the third form of im-
perfect state, 8. 544 [cp. Pol. 291,
292] ; detailed account of, ib. 555
foil.; characterised by freedom,
ib. 557 B, 561-563; a 'bazaar
of constitutions,' ib. 557 D ; the
346
Index.
humours of democracy, ib. E, 561 ;
elements contained in, ib. 564. —
democracy in animals, ib. 563 : —
the democratical man, ib. 558,
559 foil., 561, 562 ; 9. 572 ; his
place in regard to pleasure, 9.
587.
Desire, has a relaxing effect on the
soul, 4. 430 A ; the conflict of
desire and reason, 4. 440 \cp.
Phaedr. 253 foil. ; Tim. 70 A] ;—
the desires divided into simple
and qualified, 4. 437 foil. ; into
necessary and unnecessary, 8.
559-
Despots (masters), 5. 463 A. See
Tyrant.
Destiny, the, of man in his own
power, 10. 617 E.
Dialectic, the most difficult branch
of philosophy, 6. 498 ; objects of,
ib. 511; 7. 537 D ; proceeds by
a double method, 6. 511; com-
pared to sight, 7. 532 A ; capable
of attaining to the idea of good,
ibid. ; gives firmness to hypo-
theses, ib. 533 ; the coping stone
of the sciences, ib. 534 [cp. Phil.
57] ; must be studied by the rulers,
ib. 537 ; dangers of the study,
ibid. ; years to be spent in, ib.
539 ; distinguished from eristic,
ib. D (cp. 5. 454 A ; 6. 499 A) :—
the dialectician has a conception
of essence, 7. 534 [cp. Phaedo
75 D];
Dialectic. [Dialectic, the 'coping
stone of knowledge] is every-
where distinguished by Plato
from eristic, i. e., argument for
arguments sake [cp. Euthyd. 275
foil., 293 ; Meno 75 D ; Phaedo
101 ; Phil. 17; Theaet. 167 E].
// is that. 'gift of heaven ' (Phil.
1 6) which teaches men to employ
the hypotheses of science, not as
final results, but as points from
which the mind may rise into the
higher heaven of ideas and behold
truth and being. This vague
and magnificent conception was
probably hardly clearer to Plato
himself when he wrote the Re-
public than it is to us [cp. Intro-
duction, p. xcii] ; but in the
Sophist and Statesman it ap-
pears in a more definite form as a
combination of analysis and syn-
thesis by which we arrive at a true
notion of things. \Cp. the v^yr)-
pevT) ptQodos of Aristotle (Pol. i. I,
§ 3 > 8j § 1)1 which is an analogous
mode of proceeding from the parts
to the whole.} In the Laws dialec-
tic no longer occupies a prominent
place; it is the ' old man's harm-
less amusement ' (7. 820 C), or,
regarded more seriously, the me-
thod of discussion by question
and answer, which is abused by
the natural philosophers to dis-
prove the existence of the Gods
(10. 891).]
Dice (KV/$H), 10. 604 C ; skill re-
quired in dice-playing, 2. 374 C.
Diet, 3. 404; 8. 559 C [cp. Tim.
89].
Differences, accidental and essen-
tial, 5. 454.
Diomede, his command to the
Greeks (Iliad iv. 412), 3. 389
E ; 'necessity of/ (proverb), 6.
493 D-
Dionysiac festival (at Athens), 5.
475 D.
Discord, causes of, 5. 462 ; 8.
547 A, 556 E ; the ruin of states,
5. 462 ; distinguished from war,
ib. 470 [cp. Laws 1 . 628, 629].
Discourse, love of, i. 328 A ; 5.
450 B ; increases in old age, i.
328 D ; pleasure of, in the other
world, 6. 498 D [cp. Apol. 41].
Disease, origin of, 3. 404 ; the
right treatment of, ib. 405 foil.;
the physician must have expe-
rience of, in his own person,
ib. 408; disease and vice com-
pared, 4. 444 ; 10. 609 foil. [cp.
Soph. 228; Pol. 296; Laws 10.
Index.
347
906] ; inherent in everything, 10.
609.
Dishonesty, thought by men to be
more profitable than honesty, 2.
364 A.
Dithyrambic poetry, nature of, 3.
394 B.
Diversities of natural gifts, 2. 370 ;
5- 455 5 7- 535 A.
Division of labour, 2. 370, 374 A ;
3- 394 E, 395 B, 397 E ; 4. 423
E, 433 A, 435 A, 441 E, 443,
453 B ; a part of justice, 4. 433,
435 A, 441 E (cp. supra i. 332,
349) 35°, and Laws 8. 846
C) ; — of lands, proclaimed by
the would-be tyrant, 8. 565 E,
566 E.
Doctors, flourish when luxury in-
creases in the state, 2. 373 C ; 3.
405 A ; two kinds of, 5. 459 C
[cp. Laws 4. 720 ; 9. 857 Dj. Cp.
Physician.
Dog, Socrates' oath by the, 3.
399 E ; 8. 567 E ; 9. 592 ;—
dogs are philosophers, 2. 376;
the guardians the watch-dogs
of the state, ibid. ; 4. 440 D ;
5. 45lD; breeding of dogs, 5.
459-
Dolphin, Arion's, 5. 453 E.
Dorian harmony, allowed, with
the Phrygian, in the state, 3.
399 A.
Draughts, I. 333 A; skill required
in, 2. 374 C ; — comparison of an
argument to a game of draughts,
6. 487 C.
Dreams, an indication of the bestial
element in human nature, 9. 571,
572, 574 E.
Drones, the, 8. 552, 554 C, 555 E,
559 C, 564 B, 567 E ; 9. 573 A [cp.
Laws 10. 901 A].
Drunkenness, in heaven, 2. 363 D ;
forbidden in the guardians, 3.
398 E, 403 E ; — the drunken man
apt to be tyrannical, 8. 573 C.
Cp. Intoxication.
Dyeing, 4. 429 D.
E.
Early society, 2. 359.
Eating, pleasure accompanying, 8.
559-
Education, commonly divided into
gymnastic for the body and music
for the soul, 2. 376 E, 403 (see
Gymnastic, Music, and cp. Laws
7. 795 E) ; both music and gym-
nastic really designed for the soul,
3. 410 : — use of fiction in, 2. 377
foil. ; 3. 391 ; the poets bad edu-
cators, 2. 377; 3. 391, 392, 408 B ;
10. 600, 606 E, 6076 [cp. Laws
10. 886 C, 890 A] ; must be sim-
Ple> 3- 397> 4°4 E ; melody in, ib.
398 foil. ; mimetic art in, ib. 399 ;
importance of good surroundings,
ib. 401 ; influence of, on manners,
4. 424, 425 ; innovation in, dan-
gerous, ibid.-, early, should be
given through amusement, ib.
425 A ; 7. 536 E [cp. Laws i. 643
B]; ought to be the same for
men and women, 5. 451 foil., 466 ;
dangerous when ill- directed, 6.
491 ; not a process of acquisition,
but the use of powers already
existing in us, 7. 518 ; not to be
compulsory, ib. 537 A;— educa-
tion of the guardians, 2. 376 foil. ;
4. 429, 430; 7. 521 (cp. Guardians,
Ruler);— the higher or philoso-
phic education, 6. 498, 503 E,
504 ; 7. 514-537 ; age at which it
should commence, 6. 498 ; 7.537;
'the longer way,' 6. 504 (cp. 4.
435) ; 'the prelude or preamble,'
7. 532 E.
Education. [Education in the Re-
public is divided into two parts,
(i) the common education of the
citizens; (ii) the special education
of the rulers, (i) The first, be-
ginning with childhood in the
plays of the children [cp. Laws
I. 643 B], is the old Hellenic edu-
cation, [the KaTaftfpXijfjieva. TtaiSfv-
of Aristotle, Pol. viii. 2, § 6],
348
Index.
— ' music for the mind and gym-
nastic for the body ' \cp. Laws 7.
795 E]. But Plato soon discovers
that both are really intended for
the benefit of the soul \cp. Laws
5. 743 D] ; and under 'music'
he includes literature (Xdyoi), i. e.
humane culture as distinguished
from scientific knowledge. Music
precedes gymnastic j both are not
to be learned together j only the
simpler kinds of either are tole-
rated \cp. Laws Book VII, pas-
sim]. Boys and girls share
equally in both \cp. Laws 7.
794 D]. The greatest attention
must be paid to good surround-
ings; nothing mean or vile must
meet the eye or strike the ear of
the young scholar. The fairy tales
of childhood and the fictions of
the poets are alike placed under
censorship \cp. Laws Book X,
and see s. v. Poetry]. Gentleness
is to be united with manliness j
beauty of form and activity of
mind are to mingle in perfect
and harmonious accord. — (ii)
The special education commences
at twenty by the selection of the
most promising students. These
spend ten years in the acquisition
of the higher branches of arith-
metic, geometry, astronomy, har-
mony \cp. Laws 7. 817 E], which
are not to be pursued in a scientific
spirit or for utility only, but
rather with a view to their com-
bination by means of dialectic
into an ideal of all knowledge
(see s. v. Dialectic). At thirty a
further selection is made: those
selected spend five years in the
study of philosophy, are then sent
into active life for fifteen years,
and finally after fifty return to
philosophy, which for the re-
mainder of their days is to form
their chief occupation (see s. v.
Rulers).]
Egyptians, characterised by love of
money, 4. 435 E.
Elder, the, to bear rule in the state,
3. 412 B \cp. Laws 3. 690 A; 4.
7I4E]; to be over the younger,
5- 465 A \cp. Laws 4. 721 D ; 9.
879 C; ii. 917 A].
Embroidery, art of, 3. 401 A.
Enchantments, used by mendicant
prophets, 2. 3646; — enchant-
ments, i.e. tests to which the
guardians are to be subjected, 3.
413 (cp. 6. 503 A; 7. 539 E).
End, the, and use of the soul, I.
353 : — ends and excellencies
(aperai) of things, ibid. ; things
distinguished by their ends, 5.
478.
Endurance, must be inculcated
on the young, 3. 390 C (cp. 10.
605 E).
Enemies, treatment of, 5. 469.
Enquiry, roused by some objects of
sense, 7. 523.
Epeus, soul of, turns into a woman,
10. 620 C.
Epic poetry, a combination of imi-
tation and narration, 3. 394 B,
396 E; — epic poets, imitators in
the highest degree, 10. 602 C.
Er, myth of, 10. 6146 foil.
Eriphyle, 9. 590 A.
Eristic, distinguished from dialectic,
5. 454 A; 6. 499 A; 7. 5390.
Error, not possible in the skilled
person (Thrasymachus), I. 340 D.
Essence and the good, 6. 509 ; es-
sence of the invariable, 9. 585 ; —
essence of things, 6. 507 B ; ap-
prehended by the dialectician, 7.
534 B.
Eternity, contrasted with human
life, 10. 608 D.
Eumolpus, son of Musaeus, 2. 363
D.
Eunuch, the riddle of the, 5. 479.
Euripides, a great tragedian, 8.
568 A; his maxims about tyrants,
ibid.\ — quoted, Troades, 1. 1169,
ibid.
Index.
349
Eurypylus, treatment of the wound-
ed, 3. 405 E, 408 A.
Euthydemus, brother of Polemar-
chus, i. 328 B.
Evil, God not the author of, 2.
364, 379, 38o A; 3. 391 E [cp.
Laws 2. 672 B] ; the destructive
element in the soul, 10. 609 foil,
(cp. 4. 444) : — justice must exist
even among the evil, I. 351 foil. ;
their supposed prosperity, 2. 364
[cp. Gorg. 470 foil. ; Laws 2. 66 1 ;
10. 899, 905] ; more numerous
than the good, 3. 4090. Cp.
Injustice.
Excellence relative to use, 10. 601 ;
excellences (dpcral) and ends of
things, i. 353.
Exchange, the art of, necessary in
the formation of the state, 2.
369 C.
Exercises, naked, in Greece, 5. 452.
Existence, a participation in essence,
9. 585 [cp. Phaedo 101].
Experience, the criterion of true and
false pleasures, 9. 582.
Expiation of guilt, 2. 364.
Eye of the soul, 7. 518 D, 527 E, 533
D, 540 A; — the soul like the eye,
6. 508 ; 7. 518 : — Eyes, the, in re-
lation to sight, 6. 507 (cp. Sight).
P.
Fact and ideal, 5. 472, 473.
Faculties, how different, 5. 477;
— faculties of the soul, 6. 5 1 1 E ;
7- 533 E.
Faith [or Persuasion], one of the
faculties of the soul, 6. 5 1 1 D ;
7- 533 E.
Falsehood, alien to the nature of
God, 2. 382 [cp. Laws u. 917 A] ;
a medicine, only to be used by
the state, ibid.] 3. 389 A, 4140;
5. 459 D [cp. Laws 2. 663] ; hate-
ful to the philosopher, 6. 486, 490.
Family life in the state, 5. 449 ; —
families in the state, ib. 461 ; —
family and state, ib. 463 ;— cares
of family life, ib. 465 C.
Fates, the, 10. 617, 620 E.
Fear, a solvent of the soul, 4. 430 A ;
fear and shame, 5. 465 A.
Fearlessness, distinguished from
courage, 4. 430 B [cp. Laches 197
B; Protag. 349 C, 359 foil.].
Feeling, community of, in the state,
5. 464.
Festival of the Bendidaea (at the
Piraeus), i. 327 A, 354 A; of
Dionysus (at Athens), 5. 475 D.
Fiction in education, 2. 377 foil. ;
3. 391 ; censorship of, necessary,
2. 377 foil. ; 3. 38<>-39i> 401 A,
408 C ; 10. 595 foil. ; not to re-
present sorrow, 3. 387 foil. (cp.
10. 604) ; representing intemper-
ance to be discarded, 3. 390; —
stories about the gods, not to be
received, 2. 378 foil. ; 3. 388 foil.,
408 C [cp. Euthyph. 6, 8 ; Crit.
109 B ; Laws 2. 672 B ; 10. 886 C ;
12. 941] ; — stories of the world
below, objectionable, 3. 386 foil,
(cp. Hades, World below).
Final causes, argument from, applied
to justice, i. 352.
Fire, obtained by friction, 4. 434 E.
Flattery, of the multitude by their
leaders, in ill-ordered states, 4.
426 (cp. 9-59<>B).
Flute, the, to be rejected, 3. 399 ; —
flute players and flute makers, ib.
D; 10. 601.
Folly, an inanition (KCVOXJ-IS) of the
soul, 9. 585 A.
Food, the condition of life and
existence, 2. 369 C.
Forgetfulness, a mark of an un-
philosophical nature, 6. 486 D,
490 E : — the plain of Forgetful-
ness (Lethe), 10. 621 A.
Fox, the emblem of subtlety, 2.
365 C.
Fractions, 7. 525 E.
Freedom, the characteristic of demo-
cracy, 8. 557 B, 561-563-
Friend, the, must be as well as seem
350
Index.
good, i. 334, 335 ;— the friends of
the tyrant, 8. 567 E ; 9. 576.
Friendship, implies justice, I. 351
foil. ; in the state, 5. 462, 463.
Funeral of the guardians, 5. 465 E,
468 E ; 7. 540 B ;— corpses placed
on the pyre on the twelfth day,
10. 614.
Future life, 3. 387 ; 10. 614 foil. ;
punishment of the wicked in, 2.
363; 10. 615 [cp. Phaedo 108;
Gorg. 523 E, 525 ; Laws 9. 870 E,
881 B ; 10. 904 C]. See Hades,
World below.
G.
Games, as a means of education, 4.
425 A (cp. 7. 537 A) ;— dice (™/3ot),
IO. 604 C ;— draughts (Trerm'a), I.
333 A ; 2. 374 C ; 6. 487 C ;— city
(71-0X1?), 4. 422 E :— [the Olympic,
&c.] glory gained by success in,
5. 4650, 466 A; 10. 6i8A (cp.
620 B).
General, the, ought to know arith-
metic and geometry, 7. 522 D,
5256, 526 D, 527 C.
Gentleness, characteristic of the
philosopher, 2. 375, 376; 3. 410;
6. 486 C ; usually inconsistent
with spirit, 2. 375.
Geometry, must be learnt by the
rulers, 7. 526 foil.; erroneously
thought to serve for practical
purposes only, ib. 527 ;— geometry
of solids, ib. 528 ; — geometrical
necessity, 5. 458 D ; — geometrical
notions apprehended by a faculty
of the soul, 6. 5 1 1 C.
Giants, battles of the, 2. 378 B.
Gifts, given to victors, 3. 414; 5.
460, 468 ; — gifts of nature, 2. 370
A; 5- 4555 7- 535 A; may be
perverted, 6. 491 E, 495 A; 7.
519 [cp. Laws 7. 819 A; lo.
908 C].
Glaucon, son of Ariston, 1 . 327 A ;
2. 368 A ; takes up the discourse,
i. 347A; 2. 372C; 3- 39^ B ;
4. 427 D; 5- 450 A; 6. 506 D;
9. 576 B ; anxious to contribute
money for Socrates, i. 337 E ; the
boldest of men, 2. 357 A ; his
genius, ib. 368 A; distinguished
at the battle of Megara, ibid. ; a
musician, 3. 398 D ; 7. 531 A;
desirous that Socrates should
discuss the subject of women
and children, 5. 450 A; breeds
dogs and birds, ib. 459 A ; a lover,
ib. 474 D (cp. 3. 402 E ; $. 458 E) ;
not a dialectician, 7. 533 ; his
contentiousness, 8. 548 E ; not
acquainted with the doctrine of
the immortality of the soul, 10.
608.
Glaucus, the sea-god, 10. 611 C.
Gluttony, 9. 586 A.
God, not the author of evil, 2. 364,
379, 380 A; 3. 391 E [cp. Laws
2. 672 B] ; never changes, 2. 380 ;
will not lie, ib. 382 ; the maker
of all things, 10. 598 : — Gods, the,
thought to favour the unjust, 2.
362 B, 364 ; supposed to accept
the gifts of the wicked, ib. 365
[cp. Laws 4. 716 E ; 10. 905 foil. ;
12. 948] ; believed to take no
heed of human affairs, 2. 365 [cp.
Laws 10. 889 foil. ; 12. 948] ;
human ignorance of, 2. 365 [cp.
Crat 400 E ; Crit. 107 ; Farm.
134 E] ; disbelief in, 2. 365 [cp.
Laws 10. 885 foil., 909 ; 12. 948] ;
stories of, not to be repeated, 2.
378 foil. ; 3. 388 foil., 408 C [cp.
Euthyph. 6, 8; Crit. 109 B;
Laws 2. 6726; 10. 886 C; 12.
941] ; not to be represented
grieving or laughing, 3. 388;—
* gods who wander about at night
in the disguise of strangers/ 2.
381 D ; — the war of the gods and
the giants, ib. 378 B.
God. [The theology of Plato is
summed up by himself in the
second book of the Republic under
two heads, ' God is perfect and un-
changeable] and ' God is true anc.
Index.
the author of truth! These canons
are also the test by which he tries
poetry and the poets (see s. v.
Poetry) : — Homer and the tra-
gedians represent the Gods as
changing their forms or as de-
ceiving men by lying dreams, and
therefore they must be expelled
from the state. But Plato has
not yet acquired the austere temper
of his later years. He does not
threaten the impenitent unbeliever
with bonds and death (Laws 10.
908, 910), but is content to show
by argument the superiority of
justice over injustice. In' other
respects the theology of the Re-
public is repeated and amplified
in the Laws; the theses that God
is not the author of evil and will
not accept the gifts of the wicked
or favour the unjust, are main-
tained with equal earnestness in
both. The Republic is less pessi-
mistic in tone than the Laws;
but the thought of the insignifi-
cance of man and the briefness of
htmian life is already familiar to
Plato"1 s mind [cp. 6. 486 A ; 10.
604; and see s. v. Man]. The
conception of God as the De-
miurgus or Creator of the uni-
verse, which is prominent in the
Timaeus, Sophist, and Statesman,
hardly appears either in the Re-
public or the Laws (cp. Rep. 10.
596 foil. ; Laws 10. 886 foil.).]
Gold, mingled by the God in the
auxiliaries, 3. 41 5 A (cp. 416 E ;
8. 547 A) ; — [and silver] not al-
lowed to the guardians, 3. 416 E ;
4. 419, 422 D; 5. 464 D (cp. 8.
543).
Good, the saving element, 10. 609 :
— the good = the beautiful, 5. 452
[cp. Lys. 216 ; Symp. 201 B, 204
E foil.] ; the good and pleasure,
6. 505, 509 A [cp. Gorg. 497 ;
Phil, n, 60 A]; the good supe-
rior to essence, ib. 509; the
brightest and best of being, 7.
518 D ; — absolute good, 6. 507 B ;
7. 540 A ; — the idea of good, 6.
505, 508; 7. 517, 534; is the
highest knowledge, 6. 505 ; 7. 526
E ; nature of, 6. 505, 506 ;— the
child of the good, ib. 506 E, 508 : —
good things least liable to change,
2. 381 ; — goods classified, ib. 357,
3670 [cp. Protag. 334; Gorg.
451 E ; Phil. 66 ; Laws I. 631 ;
3- 697] ;— the goods of life often
a temptation, 6. 491 E, 495 A.
Good man, the, will disdain to
imitate ignoble actions, 3. 396 : —
Good men, why they take office,
i- 347; = the wise, ib. 350 [cp.
I Alcib. 124, 125]; unfortunate
(Adeimantus), 2. 364; self-suffi-
cient, 3. 387 [cp. Lys. 215 1 A];
will not give way to sorrow, ibid. ;
10. 603 E [cp. Laws 5. 732; 7.
792 B, 800 D] ; appear simple
from their inexperience of evil,
3. 409 A ; hate the tyrant, 8. 568
A ; the friends of God and like
Him, 10. 613 [cp. Phil. 39 E;
Laws 4. 716].
Goods, community of, 3. 416; 5.
464 ; 8. 543. See Community.
Government, forms of, are they ad-
ministered in the interest of the
rulers? I. 3380, 343, 346; are
all based on a principle of justice,
ib. 338 E [cp. Laws 12. 945] ; pre-
sent forms in an evil condition,
6. 492 E, 496 ; none of the exist-
ing forms adapted to philosophy,
#.497 ; — the four imperfect forms,
4. 445 B ; 8. 544 [cp. Pol. 291 foil.,
301 foil.] ; succession of changes
in states, 8. 545 foil. ;— peculiar
barbarian forms, ib. 544 D. Cp.
Constitution, State.
Government, forms of. [ The classi-
fication of forms of government
which Plato adopts in the Re-
public is not exactly the same
with that given in the Statesman
or the Laws. Both in the Re-
352
Index.
public and the Statesman the series
commences with the perfect state,
which may be either monarchy or
aristocracy, accordingly as the
'one best man* bears rule or
many who are all ' perfect in
virtue* [cp. Arist. Pol. iv. 2, § i],
But in the Republic the further
succession is somewhat fancifully
connected with the divisions of
the soul. The rule of reason [i.e.
the perfect state} passes into timo-
cracy, in which the ' spirited
element ' is predominant (8. 548),
timocracy into three governments
in turn, which represent the ' appe-
titive principle]— -first, oligarchy ',
in which the desire of wealth
is supreme (8. 533 D ; 9. 581);
secondly, democracy, characterised
by an unbounded lust for freedom
(9. 561) ; thirdly, tyranny, in
which all evil desires grow un-
checked, and the tyrant becomes
'the waking reality of what he
once was in his dreams only ' (9.
574 E). Each of these inferior
forms is illustrated in the in-
dividual who corresponds to the
state and ' is set over against it '
(8. 5500). In the Statesman, after
the government of the one or
many good has been separated,
the remaining forms are classified
accordingly as the government
has or has not regard to law,
and democracy is said to be
(303 A) 'the worst of lawful and
the best of lawless governments '
(an expression criticised by Aris-
totle, Pol. iv. 2, § 3). In the Laws
again the subject is differently
treated: monarchy and democracy
are described as l the two mother
forms,' which must be combined
in order to produce a good state
(3- 693), and the Spartan and
Cretan constitutions are therefore
praised as polities in which every
form of government is repre-
sented (4. 712). But the majority
of existing states are mere class
governments and have no regard
to virtue (12. 962 E). These
various ideas are nearly all re-
produced or criticised in the
Politics of Aristotle, who, how-
ever, does not employ the term
' timocracy ',' and adds one great
original conception, — the i*f<rr] TTO-
Xtrct'o, or government of the
middle class.]
Governments, sometimes bought
and sold, 8. 544 D.
Grace (evo-x^oo-ui/Tj), the effect of
good rhythm accompanying good
style, 3. 400 D ; all life and every
art full of grace, ib. 401 A.
Greatness and smallness, 4. 438 B ;
5. 479 B ; 7. 523, 524 ; 9. 575 C ;
10. 602 D, 605 C.
Grief, not to be indulged, 3. 387 ;
10. 603-606. Cp. Sorrow.
Guard, the tyrant's request for a, 8.
566 B, 567 E.
Guardians of the state, must be
philosophers, 2. 376 ; 6. 484, 498,
501, 5036; 7. 520, 521, 5256,
540 ; 8. 543 ; must be both spirited
and gentle, 2. 375 ; 3. 410 ; 6. 503
[cp. Laws 5.7316]; must be tested
by pleasures and pains, 3.413 (cp.
6. 503 A; 7. 539 £); have gold
and silver mingled in their veins,
3. 415 A (cp. 416 E; 8. 547 A);
their happiness, 4. 419 foil. ; 5.
465 E foil.; 6. 498 C; 7. 519 E;
will be the class in the state
which possesses wisdom, 4. 428
[cp. Laws 12. 965 A]; will form
one family with the citizens, 5.
462-466 ; must preserve moder-
ation, ib. 466 B ; divided into
auxiliaries and guardians proper,
3. 414 (cp. 8. 545 E ; and see Aux-
iliaries, Rulers): — the guardians
[i. e. the auxiliaries] must be cou-
rageous, 2. 375; 3. 386, 413 E»
416 E; 4. 429; 6. 503 E; must
have no fear of death, 3. 386 (cp.
Index.
353
6. 486 C) ; not to weep, 3. 387
(cp. 10. 603 E) ; nor to be given
to laughter, 3. 388 [cp. Laws 5.
732; II. 935]; must be tem-
perate, ib. 389 D ; must not be
avaricious, ib. 390 E ; must only
imitate noble characters and
actions, ib. 395 foil., 402 E ; must
only learn the Dorian and Phry-
gian harmonies, and play on the
lyre and harp, ib. 398, 399 ; must
be sober, ib. 398 E, 403 E ; must
be reared amid fair surroundings,
ib. 401 ; athletes of war, ib. 403,
404 B ; 4. 422 ; 7. 521 E ; 8. 543
[cp. Laws 8. 830] ; must live ac-
cording to rule, 3. 404; will not
go to law or have resort to medi-
cine, ib. 4 10 A ; must have com-
mon meals and live a soldier's
life, ib. 416 ; will not require gold
or silver or property of any kind,
ib. 417 ; 4. 419, 420 A, 422 D ; 5.
464 C ; compared to a garrison
of mercenaries (Adeimantus), 4.
419 (cp. 8. 543) ; must go to war
on horseback in their childhood,
5- 467; 7- 537 A; regulations
for their conduct in war, 5. 467
-471 : — female guardians, ib.,
456, 458> 468; 7- 540 C (cp.
Women).
Gyges, 2. 359 C ; 10. 612 B.
Gymnastic, supposed to be intended
only for the body, 2. 376 E ; 3.
403 ; 7. 521 [cp. Laws 7. 795 E] ;
really designed for the improve-
ment of the soul, 3. 410 ; like
music, should be continued
throughout life, ib. 403 C ; effect
of excessive, ib. 404, 410; 7. 537
B ; should be of a simple charac-
ter, 3. 404, 410 A; the ancient
forms of, to be retained, 4. 424 ;
must co-operate with music in
creating a harmony of the soul,
ib. 441 E ; suitable to women,
5. 452-457 [cp. Laws 7. 804, 813,
833] ; ought to be combined with
intellectual pursuits, 7. 535 D [cp.
Tim. 88] ; time to be spent in,
ib. 537.
H.
Habit and virtue, 7. 5i8E; 10.
6190.
Hades, tales about the terrors of, i.
330 D ; 2. 366 A ; such tales not
to "be heeded, 3. 386 B [cp. Crat.
403] ; — the place of punishment,
2.363; 10. 614 foil. ; Musaeus'
account of the good and bad in,
2. 363 ; — the journey to, 10. 614
[cp. Phaedo 108 A] :— (Pluto) hel-
met of, 10. 612 B. Cp. World
below.
Half, the, better than the whole, 5.
466 B.
Handicraft arts, a reproach, 9. 590
[cp. Gorg. 512].
Happiness of the unjust, i. 354; 2.
364 ; 3. 392 B (cp. 8. 545 A, and
Gorg. 470 foil. ; Laws 2. 66 1 ; 10.
899 E, 905 A) ; — of the guard-
ians, 4. 41 9 foil. ; 5. 465 E foil.;
6. 498 C ; 7. 519 E ; — of Olympic
victors, 5. 465 D, 466 A ; 10. 618
A;— of the tyrant, 9. 576 foil.,
587 ; — the greatest happiness
awarded to the most just, ib. 580
foil.
Harmonies, the more complex to
be rejected, 3. 397 foil.;— the
Lydian harmony, ib. 398; the
Ionian, ib. E ; the Dorian and
Phrygian alone to be accepted,
ib. 399-
Harmony, akin to virtue, 3. 401 A
(cp. 7. 522 A) ; — science of, must
be acquired by the rulers, 7. 531
(cp. Music) ; — harmony of soul
and body, 3. 402 D ; — harmony
of the soul, effected by temper-
ance, 4. 430, 441 E, 442 D, 443
(cp. 9. 591 D, and Laws 2. 653
B) ; — harmony in the acquisition
of wealth, 9. 591 E.
Harp, the, (luddpu), allowed in the
best state, 3. 399.
A a
354
Index.
Hatred, between the despot and his
subjects, 8. 567 E; 9. 576 A.
Health and justice compared, 4.
444 ; pleasure of health, 9. 583 C ;
secondary to virtue, ib. 591 D.
Hearing, classed among faculties, 5.
477E ; composed of two elements,
speech and hearing, and not re-
quiring, like1 sight, a third inter-
mediate nature, 6. 507 C.
Heaven, the starry, the fairest of
visible things, 7. 529 D ; the
motions of, not eternal, ib. 5 30 A.
Heaviness, 5. 479 ; 7. 524 A.
Hector, dragged by Achilles round
the tomb of Patroclus, 3. 391 B.
Helen, never went to Troy, 9. 586 C.
Hellas, not to be devastated in civil
war, 5. 470 A foil., 47 1 A:— Hel-
lenes characterised by the love
of knowledge, 4. 435 E ; did not
originally strip in the gymnasia,
5. 452 D ; not to be enslaved by
Hellenes, ib. 469 B, C ; united by
ties of blood, ib. 470 C ; not to
devastate Hellas, ib. 47 1 A foil. ;
Hellenes and barbarians are
strangers, ib. 4690, 470 C \cp.
Pol. 262 D].
Hellespont, 3. 404 C.
Hephaestus, binds Here, 2. 378 D ;
thrown from heaven by Zeus,
ibid.\ improperly delineated by
Homer, 3. 389 A ; chains Ares
and Aphrodite, ib. 390 C.
Heracleitus, the ' sun of,' 6. 498 B.
Here, bound by Hephaestus, 2.
378 D ; Here and Zeus, ibid. ; 3.
390 B ; begged alms for the
daughters of Inachus, 2. 381 D.
Hermes, the star sacred to (Mer-
cury), 10. 617 A.
Hermus, 8. 566 C.
Herodicus of Selymbria, the in-
ventor of valetudinarianism, 3.
406 A foil.
Heroes, not to lament, 3. 387, 388 ;
10. 603-606 ; to be rewarded, 5.
468 ; after death, ibid.
Heroic rhythm, 3. 400 C.
Hesiod, his rewards of justice, 2.
3636; 10. 612 A; his stories im-
proper for youth, 2. 377 D ; his
classification of the races, 8. 547
A ; a wandering rhapsode, 10.
600 D:—
Quoted :—
Theogony,
1. 154, 459, 2.377 E.
Works and Days,
1.40,5.4666.
1. 109, 8. 546 E.
1, 122, 5. 468 E.
1. 233, 2. 363 B.
1. 287, ib. 364 D.
Fragm. 117, 3., 390 E.
Hirelings, required in the state, 2.
371 E.
Holiness of marriage, 5. 458 E, 459
\cp. Laws 6. 776], See Marriage.
Homer, supports the theory that
justice is a thief, I. 334 B ; his
rewards of justice, 2. 363 B ; 10.
612 A; his stories not approved
for youth, 2. 377 D foil. (cp. 10.
595) ; his mode of narration, 3.
393 A foil.; feeds his heroes on
campaigners' fare, ib. 404 C ;
Socrates' feeling of reverence for
him, 10. 595 C, 607 (cp. 3. 391 A) ;
the captain and teacher of the
tragic poets, 10. 595 B, 598 D, E ;
not a legislator, ib. 599 E ; or a
general, ib. 600 A \cp. Ion 5 37 foil.] ;
or inventor, ibid. ; or teacher,
ibid. ; no educator, ib. 600, 606 E,
607 B ; not much esteemed in
his lifetime, ib. 600 B foil. ; went
about as a rhapsode, ibid. Pas-
sages quoted or referred to : —
Iliad i.
1. 1 1 foil., 3. 392 E foil.
1. 131, 6. 501 B.
1.225, 3. 389 E.
1. 590 foil., 2. 378 D.
1.599 foil., 3. 389 A.
Iliad ii.
1. 623, 6. 501 C.
Iliad iii.
1. 8, 3. 389 E.
Index.
355
Iliad iv.
1. 69 foil., 2. 379 E.
1.218,3. 408 A.
1. 412, ib. 389 E.
1. 431, ibid.
Iliad v.
1. 845, 10. 612 B.
Iliad vii.
1.321,5.4680.
Iliad viii.
1. 162, ibid.
Iliad ix.
1. 497 foil., 2. 364 D.
1. 513 foil., 3.390 E.
Iliad xi.
1. 576, ib. 405 E.
1. 624, ibid.
1. 844, ib. 408 A.
Iliad xii.
1. 311, 5. 468 E.
Iliad xiv.
1. 294 foil., 3. 390 C.
Iliad xvi.
1. 433, ib. 388 C.
1. 776, 8. 566 D.
1. 856 foil., 3. 386 E.
Iliad xviii.
1. 23 foil., ib. 388 A.
1. 54, ib. B.
Iliad xix.
1. 278 foil., ib. 390 E.
Iliad xx.
1. 4 foil., 2. 379 E.
1. 64 foil., 3. 386 C.
Iliad xxi.
I. 222 foil., ib. 391 B.
Iliad xxii.
II. 15, 20, ib. A.
1. 168 foil., ib. 388 C.
1. 362 foil., ib. 386 E.
1. 414, ib. 388 B.
Iliad xxiii.
1. loo foil., ib. 387 A.
1. 103 foil., ib. 386 D.
1. 151, ib. 391 B.
1. 175, ibid.
Iliad xxiv.
1. 10 foil., ib. 388 A.
1. 527, 2. 379 D.
Odyssey i.
1.35 1 foil., 4.4240.
Odyssey viii.
1. 266 foil., 3.390 D.
Odyssey ix.
1. 9. foil, ib. B.
1. 91 foil., 8. 560 C.
Odyssey x.
1. 495, 3- 386 E.
Odyssey xi.
1. 489 foil., ib. C ; 7. 516 D.
Odyssey xii.
1. 342, 3- 390 B.
Odyssey xvii.
1. 383 foil, ib. 389 D.
1. 485 foil., 2. 381 D.
Odyssey xix.
1. 109 foil., ib. 363 B.
1-395, I- 334 B.
Odyssey xx.
1. 17, 3- 390 D; 4. 441 B.
Odyssey xxiv.
1.6, 3. 387 A.
1. 40, 8. 566 D.
Homer, allusions to, i. 328 E ; 2.
381 D; 3. 390 E; 8.5440.
Homeridae, 10. 599 E.
Honest man, the, a match for
the rogue, 3. 409 C (cp. 10.
613 C).
Honesty, fostered by the possession
of wealth, I. 331 A ; thought by
mankind to be unprofitable, 2.
364 A; 3. 392 B.
Honour, pleasures enjoyed by the
lover of, 9. 581 C, 586 E :— the
'government of honour,' see Timo-
cracy.
Hope, the comfort of the righteous
in old age (Pindar), i. 331 A.
Household cares, 5. 465 C.
Human interests, unimportance of,
10. 604 B (cp. 6. 486 A, and
Theaet. 173 ; Laws i. 644 E ; 7.
803) ; — life, full of evils, 2. 379 C ;
shortness of, 10. 608 D ; — nature,
incapable of doing many things
well, 3. 395 B ; — sacrifices, 8.
565 D.
A a 2
356
Index.
Hunger, 4. 437 E, 439 ; an inanition
(fcc'voHriff) of the body, 9. 585 A.
Hymns, to the gods, may be allowed
in the State, 10: 607 A [cp. Laws
3. 700 A ; 7. 801 E] ; — marriage
hymns, 5. 459 E.
Hypothesis, in mathematics and in
the intellectual world, 6. 510 ; in
the sciences, 7. 533.
Iambic measure, 3. 400 C.
Ida, altar of the gods on, 3. 391 E.
Idea of good, the source of truth, 6.
508 (cp. 505) ; a cause like the
sun, ib. 508 ; 7. 516, 517; must
be apprehended by the lover of
knowledge, 7. 534 ; — ideas and
phenomena, 5. 476; 6. 507; —
ideas and hypotheses, 6. 510; —
absolute ideas, 5. 476 [cp. Phaedo
65, 74 ; Farm. 133] ; origin of ab-
stract ideas, 7. 523 ; nature of,
10. 596; singleness of, ib. 597
[cp. Tim. 28, 51].
Idea. [The Idea of Good is an
abstraction, which, under that
name at least, does not elsewhere
occur in Plato's writings. But
it is probably not essentially dif-
ferent from another abstraction,
lthe true being of things? which
is mentioned in many of his Dia-
logues [cp. passages cited s. "V.
Being~\. He has nowhere given
an explanation of his meaning,
not because he was ' regardless
whether we understood him or
not] but rather, perhaps, because
he was himself unable to state in
precise terms the ideal which
Jloated before his mind. He be-
longed to an age in which men
felt too strongly the first pleasure
of metaphysical speculation to be
able to estimate the true -value of
the ideas which they conceived
(cp. his own picture of the effect
of dialectic on the youthful mind,
7* 539)- To him, as to the School-
men of the Middle Ages, an ab-
straction seemed truer than a
fact : he was impatient to shake
off the shackles of sense and rise
into the purer atmosphere of ideas.
Yet in the allegory of the cave
(Book VII}, whose inhabitants
must go up to the light of perfect
knowledge but descend again into
the obscurity of opinion, he has
shown that he was not unaware
of the necessity of finding a firm
starting-point for these flights of
metaphysical imagination (cp. 6.
510). A passage in the Philebus
(65 A) gives perhaps the best in-
sight into his meaning: l If we
are not able to hunt the good with
one idea only, with three we may
take our prey, — Beauty, Sym-
metry, Truth! The three were
inseparable to the Greek mind,
and no conception of perfection
could be formed in which they
did not unite. (Cp. Introduction,
pp. Ixix, xcvii).]
Ideal state, is it possible? 5. 471,
473 ; 6. 499 1 7- 540 (cp. 7- $20,
and Laws 4. 711 E; 5. 739);
how to be commenced, 6. 501 ;
7. 540 :— ideals, value of, 5. 472.
For the ideal state, see City, Con-
stitution, Education, Guardians,
Rulers, etc.
Ignorance, nature of, 5. 477, 478 ;
an inanition (Kevaxris) of the soul,
9. 585.
Iliad, the style of, illustrated, 3. 392
E foil. ; mentioned, ib. 393 A. Cp.
Homer, Odyssey.
Ilion, see Troy.
Illegitimate children, 5. 461 A.
Illusions of sight, 7. 523 ; 10. 602
[cp. Phaedo 65 A; Phil. 380,
42 D; Theaet. I57E].
Images, (i.e. reflections of visible
objects), 6. 510 ; 10. 596 (cp. Tim.
52 D].
Index.
357
Imitation in style, 3. 393, 394 ; 10.
596 foil., 600 foil.; affects the
character, 3. 395 ; thrice removed
from the truth, 10. 596, 597, 598,
602 B ; concerned with the weaker
part of the soul, ib. 604.
Imitative poetry, 10. 595 ; arts, in-
ferior, ib. 605.
Imitators, ignorant, 10. 602.
Immortality, proof of, 10. 608 foil,
(cp. 6. 498 C, and see Soul).
Impatience, uselessness of, 10. 604
C.
Impetuosity, 6. 503 E.
Inachus, Here asks alms for the
daughters of, 2. 381 D.
Inanitions (jcfvaxrei?) of body and
soul, 9. 585 A.
Incantations used by mendicant
prophets, 2. 364 B ; in medicine,
4. 426 A.
Income Tax, I. 343 D.
Indifference to money, character-
istic of those who inherit a fortune,
I. 33° B.
Individual, inferior types of the, 8.
545 ; individual and state, 2. 368 ;
4. 434, 441 ; 5. 462 ; 8. 544 ; 9.
577 B [cp. Laws 3.689; 5.739;
9. 875, 877 C; 11.923]-
Infants have spirit, but not reason,
4. 441 [cp. Laws 12. 963 E].
Informers, 9. 575 B.
Injustice, advantage of, I. 343;
defined by Thrasymachus as dis-
cretion, ib. 348 D ; injustice and
vice, ibid. ; suicidal to states and
individuals, ib. 351 E [cp. Laws
10. 906 A] ; in perfection, 2. 360 ;
eulogists of, ib. 361, 366, 367;
3. 392 B (cp. 8. 545 A; 9.588);
only blamed by those who have
not the power to be unjust, 2.
366 C ; in the state, 4. 434 ; =
anarchy in the soul, ib. 444 B [cp.
Soph. 228] ; brings no profit, 9.
589, 590; 10.613.
Innovation in education dangerous,
4. 424 [cp. Laws 2. 656, 660 A].
See Gymnastic, Music.
Intellect, objects of, classified, 7.
534 (cp. 5. 476) ; relation of the
intellect and the good, 6. 508.
Intellectual world, divisions of, 6.
510 foil.; 7. 517; compared to
the visible, 6. 508, 509; 7. 532 A.
Intercourse between the sexes, 5.
458 foil. [cp. Laws 8. 839 foil.] ;
in a democracy, 8. 563 B.
Interest, sometimes irrecoverable
by law, 8. 556 A [cp. Laws 5.
742 C].
Intermediates, 9. 583.
Intimations, the, given by the senses
imperfect, 7. 5 23 foil. ; 10. 602.
Intoxication, not allowed in the
state, 3. 398 E, 403 E. Cp.
Drinking.
Invalids, 3. 406, 407 ; 4. 425, 426.
Ionian harmony, must be rejected,
3- 399 A.
Iron (and brass) mingled by the
God in the husbandmen and
craftsmen, 3. 415 A (cp. 8. 547 A).
Ismenias, the Theban, ' a rich and
mighty man,' I. 336 A.
Italy, ' can tell of Charondas as a
lawgiver,' 10. 599 E.
J.
Judge, the good, must himself be
virtuous, 3. 409 [cp. Pol. 305].
Judgement, the final, 10. 614 foil.
Cp. Hades.
Juggling, lo. 602 D.
Just man, the, is at a disadvantage
compared with the unjust (Thra-
symachus), i. 343 ; is happy, ib.
354 [cp. Laws I. 660 E]; attains
harmony in his soul, 4. 443 E ;
proclaimed the happiest, 9. 580
foil. ; — just men the friends of the
gods, 10. 613 [cp. Phil. 39 E;
Laws 4. 716 D] ; — just and unjust
are at heart the same (Glaucon),
3- 36o.
Justice, = to speak the truth and
pay one's debts, I. 331 foil.;
358
Index.
= the interest of the stronger, ib.
338 ; 2. 367 [cp. Gorg. 489 ; Laws
4.7 1 4 A] ; = honour among thieves,
i. 352 ; = the excellence of the
soul, ib. 353 : — the art which gives
good and evil to friends and
enemies, ib. 332 foil., 336 ; is a
thief, ib. 334; the proper virtue
of man, ib. 335 ; * sublime sim-
plicity/ ib. 348 ; does not aim at
excess, ib. 349 ; identical with
wisdom and virtue, ib. 351; a
principle of harmony, ibid. (cp.
9. 591 D) ; in the highest class of
goods, 2. 357, 3670 [cp. Laws i.
63 1 C] ; the union of wisdom, tem-
perance, and courage, 4. 433 [cp.
Laws i. 63 1 C]; a division of
labour, ibid. foil. (cp. supra, I.
332, 349, 350, and I Alcib. 127) :
— nature and origin of (Glaucon),
2- 358, 359 ; conventional, ib. 359
A|V/.Theaet. 172 A, I77C; Laws
10. 889, 890] ; praised for its con-
sequences only (Adeimantus), ib.
362 E, 366 ; a matter of appear-
ance, ib. 365 : — useful alike in war
and peace, i. 333 ; can do no
harm, ib. 335 ; more precious
than gold, ib. 336 ; toilsome, 2.
364 : — compared to health, 4.
444 :— the poets on, 2. 363, 364,
365 E : — in perfection, ib. 361 : —
more profitable than injustice, 4.
445 ; 9-5^9 foil. ; superior to in-
justice, 9. 589 ; final triumph of,
ib. 580; 10. 612, 613:— in the
state, 2. 369; 4. 431; the same
in the individual and the state,
4. 435 foil., 441 foil. : — absolute
justice, 5. 479 E ; 6. 501 B ;
7. 517 E.
Justice. [The search for justice is
the groundwork or foundation of
the Republic, which commences
with an enquiry into its nature
and ends with a triumphant de-
monstration of the superior happi-
ness enjoyed by the just man. In
the First Book several definitions
of justice are attempted, all of
which prove inadequate. Glaucon
and Adeimantus then intervene :
— mankind regard justice as a
necessity, not as a good in itself,
or at best as only to be practised
because of the temporal benefits
which fiow from it : can Socrates
prove that it belongs to a higher
class of goods ? Socrates in reply
proposes to construct an ideal state
in which justice will be more
easily recognised than in the in-
dividual. Justice is thus dis-
covered to be the essential virtue
of the state, (a thesis afterwards
enlarged upon by Aristotle [Pol.
i. 2, § 16; iii. 13, § 3]), the bond
of the social organization, and,
like temperance in the Laws [3.
696, 697 ; 4. 709 E], rather the
accompaniment or condition of
the virtues than a virtue in itself
[cp. Introduction, p. Ixiifj. Ex-
pressed in an outward or political
form it becomes the great principle
which has been already enunciated
(i. 322), ' that every man shall do
his own work;* on this Plato
bases the necessity of the division
into classes which underlies the
whole fabric of the ideal state (4.
433 foil. ; Tim. 17 C). Thus we
are led to acknowledge the happi-
ness of the just ; for he alone re-
flects in himself this vital prin-
ciple of the state (4. 445). The
final proof is supplied by a com-
parison of the perfect state with
actual forms of government.
These, like the individuals who
correspond to them, become more
and more miserable as they recede
further from the ideal, and the
climax: is reached (9. 587) when
the tyrant is shown by the aid of
arithmetic to have ' 729 times less
pleasure than the king' [i.e. the
perfectly just ruler}. Lastly, the
happiness of the just is proved to
Index.
359
extend also into the next world,
where men appear before the
judgment seat of heaven and re-
ceive the due reward of their
deeds in this lifel\
King, the Great, 8. 553 D :— plea-
sure of the king and the tyrant
compared, 9. 587 foil.; — kings
and philosophers, 5. 473 (cp. 6.
487 E, 498 foil., 501 E foil. ; 7. 540 ;
8. 543 ; 9- 592).
Kisses, the reward of the brave
warrior, 5. 468 C.
Knowledge (eVior^ju^, yiyvaxrKeiv),
= knowledge of ideas, 6. 484 ; —
nature of, 5. 477, 478; classed
among faculties, ib. 477 ; 6. 5 1 1 E ;
7. 533 E ; — previous, to birth, 7.
518 C ; — how far given by sense,
ib. 529 [cp. Phaedo 75] ; — should
not be acquired under compul-
sion, ib. 536 E ; — the foundation
of courage, 4. 429 [cp. Laches 193,
197 ; Protag. 350, 360] ;— know-
ledge and opinion, 5. 476-478 ;
6. 508, 510 A ; 7. 534 ; knowledge
and pleasure, 6. 505 ; knowledge
and wisdom, 4. 428 ; — the highest
knowledge, 6. 504 ; 7. 5 14 foil. ; —
unity of knowledge, 5. 479 [cp.
Phaedo 101] ; — the best know-
ledge, 10. 618; — knowledge of
shadows, 6. 511 D ; 7. 5 34 A :—
love of knowledge characteristic
of the Hellenes, 4. 435 E ; pecu-
liar to the rational element of the
soul, 9. 581 B.
Labour, division of, 2. 370, 374 A ;
3. 394 E, 395 B, 397 E ; 4. 423 E,
433 A, 435 A, 441 E, 443, 45315
[cp. Laws 8. 846, 847].
Lacedaemon, owes its good order
to Lycurgus, 10. 599 E ; — consti-
tution of, commonly extolled, 8. 544
D ; a timocracy, ib. 545 B : —
Lacedaemonians first after the
Cretans to strip in the gymnasia,
5.4520.
Lachesis, turns the spindle of Ne-
cessity together with Clotho and
Atropos, 10. 617 C ; her speech,
ib. D ; apportions a genius to
each soul, ib. 620 D.
Lamentation over the dead, to be
checked, 3. 387.
Lands, partition of, proclaimed by
the would-be tyrant, 8. 565 E,
566 E.
Language, pliability of, 9. 588 D
[cp. Soph. 277 B].
Laughter not to be allowed in the
guardians, 3. 388 [cp. Laws 5.
732; n. 935]; nor represented
in the gods, ib. 389.
Laws, may be given in error, I.
339 E ; supposed to arise from a
convention among mankind, 2.
359 A ; cause of, 3. 405 ; on
special subjects of little use, 4.
425, 426 [cp. Laws 7. 788]; treated
with contempt in democracies, 8.
563 E ; bring help to all in the
state, 9. 590.
Lawyers, increase when wealth
abounds, 4. 405 A.
Learning, pleasure of, 6. 486 C (cp.
9. 581, 586).
Legislation, cannot reach the
minutiae of life, 4. 425, 426 ; re-
quires the help of God, ib. 425 E.
Cp. Laws.
Leontius, story of, 4. 439 E.
Lethe, 10. 621.
Letters, image of the large and
small, 2. 368 ; 3. 402 A.
Liberality, one of the virtues of the
philosopher, 6. 485 E.
Liberty, characteristic of demo-
cracy, 8. 557 B, 561-563-
Licence, begins in music, 4. 424 E
[cp. Laws 3. 701 B] ; in demo-
cracies, 8. 562 D.
Licentiousness forbidden, 5. 458.
360
Index.
Lie, a, hateful to the philosopher,
6. 490 C (cp. supra 486 E) ;— the
true lie and the lie in words, 2.
382 ; — the royal lie (ycwalov \J/-eG-
fios), 3. 414 ;— rulers of the state
may lie, 2. 382; 3.389^4140;
5. 459 D ;— the Gods not to be
represented as lying, 2. 382 ; —
lies of the poets, ib. 377 foil.;
3. 386, 408 B (cp. 10. 597 foil.).
Life in the early state, 2. 372 ; — loses
its zest in old age, i. 329 A ; full
of evils, 2. 379 C ; intolerable
without virtue, 4. 445 ; shortness
of, compared to eternity, 10.
608 D ; — the life of virtue toil-
some, 2. 364 D ; — the just or the
unjust, which is the more advan-
tageous ? ib. 347 foil. ; — three
kinds of lives among men, 9.
581 ; — life of women ought to re-
semble that of men, 5. 451 foil.
[cp. Laws 7. 804 E] ; — the neces-
sities of life, 2. 369, 373 A ; — the
prime of life, 5. 460 E.
Light, 6. 507 E. Cp. Sight, Vision.
Light and heavy, 5. 479 ; 7. 524.
Like to like, 4. 425 C.
Literature (Xo-yot), included under
' music ' in education, 2. 376 E.
Litigation, the love of, ignoble, 3.
405.
Logic ; method of residues, 4. 427 ;
— accidents and essence distin-
guished, 5. 454 ; — nature of oppo-
sition, 4. 436 ; — categories, -rrpos n,
4. 437 ; quality and relation, ibid. ;
—fallacies, 6. 487. For Plato's
method of definitions, see Know-
ledge, Temperance; and cp.
Dialectic, Metaphysic.
Lotophagi, 8. 560 C.
Lots, use of, 5. 460 A, 462 E;
election by, characteristic of
democracy, 8. 557 A.
Love of the beautiful, 3. 402, 403
\cp. i Alcib. 131] ; bodily love and
true love, ib. 403 ; love and the
love of knowledge, 5. 474 foil. ; is
of the whole, not of the part, ib.
C, 475 B ; 6. 485 B ; a tyrant, 9.
573 B, 574 E (cp. I. 3298) :— fa-
miliarities which may be allowed
between the lover and the be-
loved, 3. 403 B : — lovers' names,
5. 474: — lovers of wine, ib. 475
A : — lovers of beautiful sights and
sounds, ib. 476 B, 479 A, 480.
Luxury in the state, 2. 372, 373 ; a
cause of disease, 3. 405 E ; would
not give happiness to the citizens,
4. 420, 421 ; makes men cowards,
9.5906.
Lycean Zeus, temple of, 8. 565 D.
Lycurgus, the author of trje great-
ness of Lacedaemon, 10. 599 E.
Lydia, kingdom of, obtained by
Gyges, 2. 359 C : — Lydian har-
monies, to be rejected, 3. 398 E
foil.
Lying, a privilege of the state, 3.
389 A, 414 C;. 5-459D.
Lyre, the instrument of Apollo,
and allowed in the best state,
3- 399 D.
Lysanias, father of Cephalus, I.
330 B.
Lysias, the brother of Polemarchus,
1.3286.
M.
Madman, arms not to be returned
to a, I. 331 ; fancies of madmen,
8. 573 C.
Magic, 10. 602 D.
Magistrates, elected by lot in de-
mocracy, 8. 5 57 A.
Magnanimity, (^eyaXoVpeTma), one
of the philosopher's virtues, 6.
486 A, 490 E, 494 A.
Maker, the, not so good a judge
as the user, 10. 601 C \cp. Crat.
390].
Man, 'the master of himself,' 4.
430 E [cp. Laws I. 626 E foil.];
** the form and likeness of God,' 6.
501 B [cp. Phaedr. 248 A; Theaet.
I76C; Laws 4. 7i6D]; his unim-
portance, 10. 6046 (cp. 6. 486 A,
Index.
361
and Laws 1. 644 E ; 7. 803) ; has
the power to choose his own
destiny, 10. 617 E ; — the one best
man, 6. 502 {cp. Pol. 301] : — Men
are not just of their own will, 2.
366 C ; unite in the state in order
to supply each other's wants, ib.
369 ; — the nature of men and
women, 5. 453~455 ;— analogy of
men and animals, ib. 459; — three
classes of, 9. 581.
Manners, influenced by education,
4. 424, 425 ; cannot be made
the subject of legislation, ibid. ;
freedom of, in democracies, 8.
563 A.
' Many,' the term, as applied to
the beautiful, the good, &c., 6.
507.
Many, the, flatter their leaders into
thinking themselves statesmen, 4.
426 ; wrong in their notions about
the honourable and the good, 6.
493 E ; would lose their harsh
feeling towards philosophy if
they could see the true philoso-
pher, ib. 500 ; their pleasures and
pains, 9. 586 ;— ' the great beast,'
6. 493. Cp. Multitude.
Marionette players, 7. 5146.
Marriage, holiness of, 5. 458 E, 459 ;
age for,z£. 460; prayers and sacri-
fices at, ibid. ; — marriage festi-
vals, ib. 459, 460.
Marsyas, Apollo to be preferred to,
3- 399 E.
Mathematics, 7. 522-532 ; use of
hypotheses in, 6. 510; — mathema-
tical notions perceived by a faculty
of the soul, 6. 51 1 C : — the mathe-
matician not usually a dialecti-
cian, 7. 531 E.
Mean, happiness of the, 10. 619 A
[cp. Laws 3. 679 A; 5. 728 E ;
7.7920].
Meanness, unknown to the philo-
sopher, 6. 486 A; characteristic
of the oligarchs, 8. 554.
Measurement, art of, corrects the
illusions of sight, 10. 602 D.
Meat, roast, the best diet for soldiers,
3. 404 D.
Medicine, cause of, 3. 405 ; not in-
tended to preserve unhealthy and
intemperate subjects, ib. 406 foil,
408 A ; 4. 426 A [cp. Tim. 89 B] ;
the two kinds of, 5. 459 [cp. Laws
4. 720] ; use of incantations in,
4. 426 A ; — analogy of, employed
in the definition of justice, I.
332 C.
Megara, battle of, 2. 368 A.
Melody, in education, 3. 398 foil. ;
its influence, 10. 601 B.
Memory, the philosopher should
have a good, 6. 486 D, 490 E,
494 A; 7. 535 B.
Mendicant prophets, 2. 364 C.
Menelaus, treatment of, when
wounded, 3. 408 A.
Menoetius, father of Patroclus, 3.
388 C.
Mental blindness, causes of, 7.518.
Merchants, necessary in the state,
2. 371.
Metaphysics ; absolute ideas, 5.
476 ; — abstract and relative ideas,
7. 524 ; — analysis of knowledge,
6. 510; — qualifications of relative
and correlative, 4. 437 foil. ; 7.
524. Cp. Idea, Logic.
Metempsychosis, 10. 617. Cp.
Soul.
Midas, wealth of, 3. 408 B.
Might and right, i. 338 foil. [cp.
Gorg. 483, 489 ; Laws I. 627 ; 3.
690 ; 10. 890].
Miletus, Thales of, 10. 600 A.
Military profession, the, 2. 374.
Mimetic art, in education, 3. 394
foil. ; the same person cannot
succeed in tragedy and comedy,
ib. 395 A; imitations lead to habit,
ib. D ; men acting women's part,
ib. E ; influence on character,
ibid. foil. Cp. Imitation.
' Mine and thine,' a common cause
of dispute, 5. 462.
Ministers of the state must be edu-
cated, 7. 519. See Ruler.
362
Index.
Miser, the, typical of the oligarchical
state, 8. 555 A (cp. 559 D).
Misfortune, to be borne with
patience, 3. 387 ; 10. 603-606.
Models (or types), by which the
poets are to be guided in their
compositions, 2. 379 A.
Moderation, necessity of, 5. 4666
[cp. Laws 3. 690 E ;. 5,732, 736 E].
Momus (god of jealousy), 6. 487 A.
Monarchy, distinguished from aris-
tocracy as that form of the perfect
state in which one rules, 4. 445 C
(cp. 9. 576 D, and Pol. 301) ; the
happiest form of government, 9.
576E(cp.58oC,587B).
Money, needed in the state, 2.
371 B [cp. Laws ii. 918]; not
necessary in order to carry on
war, 4. 423 ; — love of, among the
Egyptians and Phoenicians, ib.
435 E ; characteristic of timocracy
and oligarchy, 8. 548 A, 553,
562 A ; referred to the appetitive
element of the soul, 9. 580 E ;
despicable, ib. 589 E, 590 C (cp.
3-39<>E).
Money-lending, in oligarchies, 8.
555, 556.
Money-making, art of, in Cephalus'
family, I. 330 B ; evil of, 8. 556 ;
pleasure of, 9. 581 C, 586 E.
Money-qualifications in oligarchies,
8. 550, 551.
Moon, reputed mother of Orpheus,
2. 364 E.
Motherland, a Cretan word, 9.
575 E [cp. Menex. 237].
Mothers in the state, 5. 460.
Motion and rest, 4. 436; — motion
of the stars, 7. 529, 530; 10.
6i6E.
Multitude, the, the great Sophist, 6.
492 ; their madness, ib. 496 C.
Cp. Many.
Musaeus, his pictures of a future
life, 2. 3630, £,364 E.
Muses, the, Musaeus and Orpheus
the children of, 2. 364 E.
Music, to be taught before gym-
nastic, 2. 376 E (cp. 3. 403 C) ; in-
cludes literature (Xo'yoi), 2. 376 E ;
— in education, ib. 377 foil. ; 3. 398
foil. ; 7. 522 A (see Poetry, Poets,
andcp. Protag. 326 ; Laws 2. 654,
660) ; complexity in, to be re-
jected, 3. 397 [cp. Laws 7. 812] ;
the severe and the vulgar kind,
ibid. [cp. Laws 7. 802] ; the end
of, the love of beauty, ib. 403 C ;
like gymnastic, should be studied
throughout life, ibid. ; the simpler
kinds of, foster temperance in the
soul, ib. 404 A, 410 A; effect of
excessive, ib. 410, 411; ancient
forms of, not to be altered, 4.
424 [cp. Laws 2. 657; 7. 799,
801] ; must be taught to women,
5- 452.
Music. [Music to the ancients had
a far wider significance than to
us. It was- opposed to gymnastic
as l mental ' to l bodily ' training,
and included equally reading and
writing, mathematics, -harmony,
poetry, and music strictly speak-
ing: drawing, as Aristotle tells
•its (Pol. viii. 3, § i), was some-
times made a separate division. I .
Music (in this wider sense}, Plato
says, should precede gymnastic j
and, according to a remarkable
Passage in the Protagoras (325 C),
the pupils in a Greek school were
actually instructed in reading
and writing, made to learn poetry
by heart, and taught to play on
the lyre, before they went to the
gymnasium. The ages at which
children should commence these
various studies are not stated in
the Republic; but in the Vllth
Book of the Laws, where the
subject is treated more in detail,
the children begin going to school
at ten, and spend three years in
learning to read and write, and
another three years in music
(Laws 7. 810). This agrees very
fairly with the selection of the
Index.
363
most promising youth at the age
of twenty (Rep. 7. 537), as it
would allow a corresponding
period of three years for gym-
nastic training. 1 1 . Music, strictly
so called, plays a great part in
Plato's scheme of education. He
hopes by its aid to make the lives
of his youthful scholars har-
monious and gracious, and to
implant in their souls true con-
ceptions of good and evil. Music
is a gift of the Gods to men, and
was never intended, 'as the many
foolishly and blasphemously sup-
pose] merely to give us an idle
pleasure (Tim. 47 E ; Laws 2.
654, 658 E ; 7. 802 D). Neither
should a freeman aim at attaining
perfect execution \cp. Arist. Pol.
viii. 6, §§ 7, 15] : in the Laws (7.
810) we are told that every one
must go through the three years
course of music, ' neither more nor
less, whether he like or whether he
dislike the study? Both instru-
ments and music are to be of a
simple character: in the Re-
public only the lyre, the pipe, and
the flute are tolerated, and the
Dorian and Phrygian harmonies.
No change in the fashions of music.
is permitted; for where there is
licence in music there will be
anarchy in the state. In this
desire for simplicity and fixity in
music Plato was probably opposed
to the tendencies of his own age.
The severe harmony which had
once characterized Hellenic art
was passing out of favour : alike
in architecture, sculpture, paint-
ing, literature, and music, richer
and more ornate styles prevailed.
We regard the change as inevit-
able, and not perhaps wholly to
be regretted: to Plato it was a
cause rather than a sign of the
decline of 'Hellas •.]
Musical amateurs, 5. 475 ; — educa-
tion, 2. 377 ; 3. 398 foil. ; 7. 522 A;
— instruments, the more complex
kinds of, rejected, 3. 399 \cp. Laws
7. 8i2D];— modes, ib. 397-399;
changes in, involve changes in
the laws, 4. 424 C.
Mysteries, 2. 365 A, 366 A, 378 A ;
8. 560 E.
Mythology, misrepresentations of
the gods in, 2. 378 foil. ; 3. 388
foil, 408 C (cp. Gods); like poetry,
has an imitative character, 3.
392 D foil.
ar.
Narration, styles of, 3. 392, 393,
396.
National qualities, 4. 435.
Natural gifts, 2. 370 A; 5. 455;
6. 491 E, 495 A; 7. 519,535-
Nature, recurrent cycles in, 8. 546 A
(cp. Cycles) ; divisions of, 9. 584
[cp. Phil. 23].
Necessities, the, of life, 2. 368, 373 A.
Necessity, the mother of the Fates,
10. 616, 617, 621 A.
Necessity, the, ' which lovers know,'
5. 458 E; — the 'necessity of
Diomede,' 6. 493 D.
Nemesis, 5. 451 A.
Niceratus, son of Nicias, i. 327 C.
Nicias, i. 327 C.
Nightingale, Thamyras changed
into a, 10. 620.
Niobe, sufferings of, in tragic poetry,
2. 380 A.
vonos, strain and law, 7. 532 E \cp.
Laws 7. 800 A].
Not-being,^. 477.
Novelties in music and gymnastic
to be discouraged, 4. 424.
Number, said to have been invented
by Palamedes, 7. 522 D ;— the
number of the State, 8. 546.
O.
Objects and ideas to be distin-
guished, 5. 476; 6. 507.
Index.
Odysseus and Alcinous, 10. 614 B ;
chooses the lot of a private man,
ib. 620 D.
Odyssey, 3. 393 A. Cp. Iliad.
Office, not desired by the good
ruler, 7. 520 A.
Old age, complaints against, 1. 329 ;
Sophocles quoted in regard to,
ibid. ; wealth a comforter of age,
ibid. ; — old men think more of the
future life, ib. 330 ; not students,
7. 536 [cp. Laches 189];— the
older to bear rule in the state, 3.
412 [cp. Laws 3. 690 A; 4-7I4E];
to be over the younger, 5. 465 A
[cp. Laws 4. 721 D ; 9. 879 C ; 1 1.
917 A].
Oligarchy, a form of government
which has many evils, 8. 544, 551,
< 552 ; origin of, ib. 550 ; nature of,
ibid. ; always divided against it-
self, ib. 55 1 D, 5 54 E:— the oli-
garchical man, 8. 553 ; a miser,
ib. 555 ; his place in regard to
pleasure, 9. 587.
Olympian Zeus, the Saviour, 9.
583 B.
Olympic victors, happiness and
glory of, 5. 465 D, 466 A (cp. 10.
6i8A).
One, the, study of, draws the mind
to the contemplation of true being,
7. 525 A.
Opinion and knowledge, 5. 476-478 ;
6. 508 D, 5 10 A ; 7. 534 ; the
lovers of opinion, 5. 479, 480 ; a
blind guide, 6. 506 ; objects of
opinion and intellect classified,
7- 534 (cp. 5- 476);— true opinion
and courage, 4. 429, 430 (cp.
Courage).
Opposites, qualification of, 4. 436 ;
in nature, 5. 454, 475 E. Cp.
Contradiction.
Oppositions in the soul, 10. 603
D.
Orpheus, child of the Moon and the
Muses, 2. 364 E ; soul of, chooses
a swan's life, 10. 620 A ; — quoted,
2. 364 E.
P.
Paeanian, Charmantides the, I.
328 B.
Pain, cessation of, causes pleasure,
9. 583 D [cp. Phaedo 60 A ;
Phil. 51 A] ; a motion of the
soul, ib. E.
Painters, 10. 596, 597; are imitators,
ib. 597 [cp. Soph. 234] ; painters
and poets, ib. 597, 603, 605 : — ' the
painter of constitutions,' 6. 501.
Painting, in light and shade, 10.
602 C.
Palamedes and Agamemnon in the
play, 7. 522 D.
Pamphylia, Ardiaeus a tyrant of
some city in, 10. 615 C.
Pandarus, author of the violation of
the oaths, 2. 379 E ; wounded
Menelaus, 3. 408 A.
Panharmonic scale, the, 3. 399.
Panopeus, father of Epeus, 10.
620 B.
Pantomimic representations, not to
be allowed, 3. 397.
Paradox about justice and injustice,
the, I. 348.
Parental anxieties, 5. 465 C [cp.
Euthyd. 306 E].
Parents, the oldest and most indis-
pensable of friends, 8. 574 C ;
parents and children in the state,
5. 461.
Part and whole, in regard to the
happiness of the state, 4. 420 D ;
5. 466; 7. 519 E; in love, 5.
474 C, 475 B ; 6. 485 B.
Passionate element of the soul, 4.
440; 6. 504 A; 8. 548 D; 9.
571 E, 580 A. See Spirit.
Passions, the, tyranny of, i. 329 C ;
fostered by poetry, 10. 606.
Patient and agent equally quali-
fied, 4. 436 [cp. Gorg. 476 ; Phil.
27 A].
Patroclus, cruel vengeance taken by
Achilles for, 3. 391 B ; his treat-
ment of the wounded Eurypylus,
ib. 406 A.
Index.
365
Pattern, the heavenly, 6. 500 E ;
7. 540 A; 9. 592 [cp. Laws 5.
739 D].
Paupers. See Poor.
Payment, art of, I. 346.
Peirithous, son of Zeus, the tale of,
not to be repeated, 3. 391 D.
Peleus, the gentlest of men, 3. 391 C.
Perception, in the eye and in the
soul, 6. 508 foil.
Perdiccas [King of Macedonia], I.
336 A.
Perfect state, difficulty of, 5. 472;
6. 502 E [cp. Laws 4. 711] ; pos-
sible, 5. 471, 473; 6. 4995 7- 540
[cp. Laws 5. 739] ; manner of its
decline, 8. 546 [cp. Grit. 120].
Periander, the tyrant, I. 336 A.
Personalities, avoided by the phi-
losopher, 6. 500 B \cp. Theaet.
I74C].
Personification ; the argument com-
pared to a search or chase, 2.
368 C ; 4. 427 C, 432 ; to a stormy
sea, 4. 441 B ; to an ocean, 5.
453 D ; to a game of draughts,
6. 487 B ; to a journey, 7. 532 E ;
to a charm, 10. 608 A ;— * has
travelled a long way,' 6. 484 A ;
— 'veils her face/ ib. 503 A ; — 'fol-
lowing in the footsteps of the
argument,5 2. 365 C ;— ' whither
the argument may blow, thither
we go,' 3. 394 D ; — ' a swarm of
words,' 5. 450 B ; — the three
waves, ib. 457 C, 472 A, 473 C.
Persuasion [or Faith], one of the
faculties of the soul, 6. 511 D;
7- 533 E.
Philosopher, the, has the quality of
gentleness, 2. 375, 376; 3. 410;
6. 486 C ; 'the spectator of all
time and all existence/ 6. 486 A
[cp. Theaet. 173 E] ; should have
a good memory, ib. D, 490 E,
494 A ; 7. 535 ; has his mind
fixed upon true being, 6. 484, 485,
486 E, 490, 500 C, 501 D ; 7. 521,
537 D; 9-581, 582C (cp. 5. 475
E ; 7. 520 B, 525, and Phaedo
82 ; Phaedr. 249 ; Theaet. 173 E ;
Soph. 249 D, 254) ; his qualifica-
tions and excellences, 6. 485 foil.,
490 D, 491 B, 4946 [cp. Phaedo
68] ; corruption of the philoso-
pher, ib. 491 foil. ; is apt to retire
from the world, 2^.496 [cp. Theaet.
173] ; does not delight in per-
sonal conversation, ib. 500 B [cp.
Theaet. 174 C] ; must be an arith-
metician, 7. 525 B ; pleasures of
the philosopher, 9. 581 E :— Phi-
losophers are to be kings, 5. 473
(cp. 6. 487 E, 498 foil., 501 E foil. ;
7. 540 ; 8. 543 ; 9. 592) ; are lovers
of all knowledge, 5. 475 ; 6. 486 A,
490 ; true and false, 5. 475 foil. ;
6. 484, 491, 494, 496 A, 500;
7. 535; to be guardians, 2. 375
(see Guardians) ; why they are
useless, 6. 487 foil. ; few in num-
ber, ib. E, 496, 499 B, 503 B [cp.
Phaedo 69 C] ; will frame the
state after the heavenly pattern,
ib. 501 ; 7. 540 A ; 9. 592 ; edu-
cation of, 6. 503 ; philosophers
and poets, 10. 607 [cp. Laws 12.
967].
Philosophic nature, the, rarity of, 6.
491 ; causes of the ruin of, ibid.
Philosophy, every headache as-
cribed to, 3. 407 C ; = love of real
knowledge, 6. 485 (cp. supra 5.
475 E); the corruption of, 6. 491 ;
philosophy and the world, ib. 494;
the desolation of, ib. 495 ; philo-
sophy and the arts, ib. E, 496 C
(cp. supra 5. 475 D, 476 A) ; true
and false philosophy, 6. 496 E,
498 E ; philosophy and govern-
ments, ib. 497 ; time set apart for,
ib. 498 ; 7. 539 ; commonly neg-
lected in after life, 6. 498 ; pre-
judice against, ib. 500, 501 ; why
it is useless, 7. 517, 535, 539 ; the
guardian and saviour of virtue,
8. 549 B ; philosophy and poetry,
10. 607; aids a man to make a
wise choice in the next world, ib.
618.
366
Index.
Phocylides, his saying, 'that as soon
as a man has a livelihood he
should practise virtue,' 3. 407 B.
Phoenician tale, the, 3. 414 C foil.
Phoenicians, their love of money,
4- 436 A.
Phoenix, tutor of Achilles, 3. 390 E.
Phrygian harmony, the, 3. 399.
Physician, the, not a mere money
maker, i. 341 C, 342 D ; the good
physician, 3. 408 ; physicians find
employment when luxury in-
creases, 2. 373 C ; 3. 405 A. Cp.
Medicine.
Pigs, sacrificed at the Mysteries, 2.
378 A.
Pilot, the, and the just man, I.
332 (cp. 341) ; the true pilot, 6.
488 E.
Pindar, on the hope of the righteous,
I. 331 A ; on Asclepius, 3. 408 B ;
— quoted, 2. 365 B.
Pipe, the, (o-upi-yl), one of the
musical instruments permitted to
be used, 3. 399 D.
Piraeus, i. 327 A; 4. 439 E; So-
crates seldom goes there, 1. 328 C.
Pittacus of Mitylene, a sage, I.
335 E.
Plays of children should be made a
means of instruction, 4. 425 A ;
7. 537 A [cp. Laws i. 643 B].
Pleasure, not akin to virtue, 3. 402,
403 ; pleasure and love, ibid. ; de-
fined as knowledge or good, 6.
505 B, 509 B ; the highest, 9. 583 ;
caused by the cessation of pain,
ib. D [cp. Phaedo 60 A ; Phil. 51] ;
a motion of the soul, ib. E ; — real
pleasure unknown to the tyrant,
ib. 587 ; — pleasure of learning, 6.
486 C (cp. 9. 581, 586, and Laws
2. 667) ; — sensual pleasure, 7. 519;
9. 586 ; a solvent of the soul, 4.
430 A [cp. Laws I. 633 E]; not
desired by the philosopher, 6.
485 E : — Pleasures, division of,
into necessary and unnecessary,
8.558, 559, 5°i A; 9.572, 581 E;
honourable and dishonourable,
8. 561 C ; three classes of, 9.
581 ; criterion of, ib. 582 ; classi-
fication of, ib. 583 ; — pleasures of
smell, ib. 584 B ; — pleasures of
the many, 585 ; of the passionate,
ib. 586 ; of the philosopher, ib.
586, 587.
Pluto, 8. 554 B.
Poetry, styles of, 3. 392~394, 398 ;
in the state, ib. 392-394, 398 ; 8.
568 B ; 10. 595 foil., 605 A, 607 A
[cp. Laws 7. 817] ; effect of, 10.
605 ; feeds the passions, ib. 606 ;
poetry and philosophy, ib. 607
[cp. Laws 12. 967] : — * colours' of
poetry, ib. 601 A.
Poetry. [The Republic is the first
of Plato's works in which he
seriously examines the value of
poetry in education, and the place
of the poets in the state. The
question could hardly be neglected
by the philosopher who proposed
to construct an ideal polity or
government of the best. For
poetry played a great part in
Hellenic life: the children learned
whole poems by heart in their
schools (Protag. 326 A ; Laws 7.
8ioC); the rhapsode delighted
the crowds at the festivals (Ion
535) ; the theatres were free, or
almost free, to all, ( costing but a
drachma at the most"1 (Apol. 26
D); the intervals of a banquet
were filled up by conversation
about the poets (Protag. 347 C).
The quarrel between philosophy
and poetry was an ancient one,
which had found its first ex-
pression in the attacks of Xeno-
phanes (538 B.C.) and Heracleitus
(508 B.C.) upon the popular my-
thology. In the earlier dialogues
of Plato the poets are treated with
an ironical courtesy, through
which an antagonistic spirit is
allowed here and there to appear :
they are ' winged and holy beings '
(Ion 534) who sing by inspiration^
Index.
367
but at the same time are the worst
possible critics of their own writ-
ings and the most self-conceited of
mortals (Apol. 22D). In the
Republic (II and ///), Plato
begins the trial of poetry by the
enqitiry whether the tales and
legends related by the epic and
tragic poets are true in them-
selves or likely to furnish good
examples to his future citizens.
They cannot be t me, for they are
contrary to the nature of God (see
s. v. God}, and they are certainly
not proper lessons for youth.
There must be a censorship of
poetry, and all objectionable pas-
sages expunged; suitable rules
and regulations vtfill be laid down,
and to these the poets must con-
form. In the Xth Book the argu-
ment takes a deeper tone. The
Poet is proved to be an impostor
thrice removed from the truth, a
wizard who steals the hearts of
the unwary by his spells and en-
chantments. Men easily fall into
the habit of imitating what they
admire; and the lamentations
and woes of the tragic hero and
the unseemly btiffoonery of the
comedian are equally bad models
for the citizens of a free and noble
state. The poets must therefore
be banished, unless, Plato adds,
the lovers of poetry can persuade
us of her innocence of the charges
laid against her. In the Laws a
similar conclusion is reached: —
' The state is an imitation of the
best life, and the noblest form of
tragedy. The legislator and the
poet are rivals, and the latter
can only be tolerated if his words
are in harmony with the laws of
the state' (vii. 817)].
Poets, the, love their poems as their
own creation, i. 330 C [cp. Symp.
209] ; speak in parables, ib. 332 B
(cp. 3. 413 B) 5 on justice, .2. 363,
364, 365 E ; bad teachers of youth,
#• 377 5 3- 39 !» 392> 4°8 C [cp.
Laws 10. 866 C, 890 A] ; must be
restrained by certain rules, e. 379
foil. ; 3. 398 A [cp. Laws 2. 656,
660 A; 4. 719]; banished from
the state, 3. 398 A ; 8. 568 B ;
10. 595 foil., 605 A, 607 A [cp.
Laws 7. 817] ; poets and tyrants,
8. 568 ; thrice removed from the
truth, 10. 596, 597, 598 E, 602 B,
605 C ; imitators only, ib. 600,
60 1 (cp. 3. 393, and Laws 4. 719
C) ; poets and painters, 10. 601,
6c«3> 605; — 'the poets who were
children and prophets of the
gods ' (? Orpheus and Musaeus ;
cp. supra 364 E), 2. 366 A.
Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus,
i. 327 B; 'the heir of the argu-
ment,' ib. 331 ; intervenes in the
discussion, ib. 340; wishes So-
crates to speak in detail about
the community of women and
children, 5. 449.
Politicians, in democracies, 8. 564.
Polydamas, the pancratiast, i. 338
C.
Poor, the, have no time to be ill,
3. 406 E ; everywhere hostile to
the rich, 4. 423 A ; 8. 551 E [cp.
Laws 5. 736 A] ; very numerous
in oligarchies, 8. 552 D ; not de-
spised by the rich in time of
danger, ib. 556 C.
Population, to be regulated, 5. 460.
Poverty, prejudicial to the arts, 4.
421 ; poverty and crime, 8. 552.
Power, the struggle for, 7. 520 C
[cp. Laws 4. 715 A].
Pramnian wine, 3. 405 E, 408 A.
Priam, Homer's delineation of, con-
demned, 3. 388 B.
Prisoners in war, 5. 468-470.
Private property, not allowed to the
guardians, 3. 416 E ; 4. 420 A,
422 D ; 5. 464 C ; 8. 543.
Prizes of valour, 5. 468.
Prodicus, a popular teacher, 10.
600 C.
368
Index.
Property, to be common, 3. 416 E;
4. 420 A, 422 D ; 5. 464 C ; 8.
543 ; restrictions on the disposi-
tion of, 8. 556 A [cp. Laws II.
923] : — property qualifications in
oligarchies, ib. 550, 551.
Prophets, mendicant, 2. 364 C.
Proportion, akin to truth, 6. 486 E.
Prose writers on justice, 2. 364 A.
Protagoras, his popularity as a
teacher, 10. 600 C.
Proteus, not to be slandered, 2. 38 1 D.
Proverbs: 'birds of a feather/ I.
329 A ; ' shave a lion,' ib. 341 C ;
' let brother help brother,' 2. 362
D ; 'wolf and flock/ 3. 415 D ;
' one great thing/ 4. 423 E ; ' hard
is the good/ ib. 435 C ; ' friends
have all things in common/ 5.
449 C ; ' the useful is the noble/
ib. 457 B ; 'the wise must go to
the doors of the rich/ 6. 489 B (cp.
2.3646); ' what is more than hu-
man/ 6. 492 E ; ' the necessity of
Diomede/z£.493D; 'the she-dog
as good as her mistress/ 8. 563 D ;
'out of the smoke into the fire/
ib. 569 B ; ' does not come within
a thousand miles' (ot»S' wcrap
0<JXX«), 9. 575 D.
Public, the, the great Sophist, 6.
492 ; compared to a many-headed
beast, ib. 493 ; cannot be philo-
sophic, &.494A [cp. Pol. 292 D].
See Many, Multitude.
Punishment, of the wicked, in the
world below, 2. 363 ; 10. 614. Cp.
Hades, World below.
Purgation of the luxurious state, 3.
399 E ; — of the city by the tyrant,
8. 567 D ;— of the soul, by the
tyrannical man, ib. 573 A.
Pythagoreans, the, authorities on
the science of harmony, 7. 529,
53°> S31 J never reach the natural
harmonies of number, ib. 531 C ;
— the Pythagorean way of life, 10.
600 A.
Pythian Oracle, the, 5. 461 E ; 7.
540 C.
Quacks, 5. 459.
Quarrels, dishonourable, 2. 378 ; 3.
395 E ; will be unknown in the
best state, 2. 378 B ; 5. 464 E [cp.
Laws 5. 739] ;— quarrels of the
Gods and heroes, 2. 378.
Rational element of the soul, 4.
435-442 ; 6. 504 A; 8. 550 A; 9.
571, 580 E, 581 [cp. Tim. 69 E-
72] ; ought to bear rule, and be
assisted by the spirited element
against the passions, 4. 441 E,
442 ; characterized by the love of
knowledge, 9. 581 B ; the plea-
sures of, the truest, ib. 582 ; pre-
serves the mind from the illusions
of sense, 10. 602.
Rationalism among youth, 7. 538
[cp. Laws 10. 886].
Reaction, 8. 564 A.
Read, learning to, 3. 402 A.
Reason, a faculty of the soul, 6.
511 D (cp. 7. 533 E-) ; reason and
appetite, 9. 571 (cp. 4. 439~442,
and Tim. 69 E foil.) ; reason
should be the guide of pleasure,
9. 585-587.
Reflections, 6. 510 A.
Relations, slights inflicted by, in
old age, I. 329.
Relative and correlative, qualifica-
tions of, 4. 437 foil. [cp. Gorg.
476] ; how corrected, 7. 524.
Relativity of things and individuals,
5. 479 ; fallacies caused by, 9.
584, 585 ; 10. 602, 605 C.
Religion, matters of, left to the god
at Delphi, 4. 427 A (cp. 5. 461 E,
469 A; 7. 540 B).
Residues, method of, 4. 427 E.
Rest and motion, 4. 436.
Retail traders, necessary in the
state, 2. 371 [cp. Laws n. 918].
Reverence in the young, 5. 465 A
Index.
[cp. Laws 5, 729; 9- ^79; II.
917 A].
Rhetoric, professors of, 2. 365 D.
Rhythm, 3. 400; goes with the
subject, ib. 398 D, 400 B ; its per-
suasive influence, ib. 401 E ; 10.
6oiB.
Riches. See Wealth.
Riddle, the, of the eunuch and the
bat, 5. 479 C.
Ridicule, only to be directed against
folly and vice, 5. 452 E ; danger
of unrestrained ridicule, 10. 606 C
[cp. Laws n. 935 A].
Riding, the children of the guard-
ians to be taught, 5. 467 ; 7. 537 A
[cp. Laws 7.794D]-
Right and might, I. 338 foil.
Ruler, the, in the strict and in the
popular sense, I. 341 B ; the true
ruler does not ask, but claim
obedience, 6. 489 C [cp. Pol. 300,
301]; the ideal ruler, ib.^o'z: —
Rulers of states ; do they study
their own interests? i. 338 D,
343, 346 (cp. 7. 520 C) ; are not
infallible, I. 339; how they are
paid, ib. 347 ; good men do not
desire office, ibid. ; 7. 520 D ; why
they become rulers, I. 347 ; pre-
sent rulers dishonest, 6. 496 D : —
[in the best state] must be tested
by pleasures and pains, 3. 413
(cp. 6. 503 A ; 7. 539 E) ; have
the sole privilege of lying, 2. 382 ;
3. 389 A, 414 C ; 5. 459 D [cp.
Laws 2. 663] ; must be taken from
the older citizens, 3. 412 (cp. 6.
498 C) ; will be called friends and
saviours, 5. 463 ; 6. 502 E ; must
be philosophers, 2. 376 ; 5. 473 ;
6. 484, 497 foil., 501, 503 B ; 7.
520, 521, 525 B, 540 ; 8. 543 ; the
qualities which must be found in
them, 6. 503 A; 7. 535; must
attain to the knowledge of the
good, 6, 506; 7. 519; will ac-
cept office as a necessity, 7. 520
E> 540 A ; will be selected at
twenty, and again at thirty, from
the guardians, ib. 537; must
learn arithmetic, ib. 522-526 ;
geometry, zA 526, 527 ; astronomy,
ib. 527-530 ; harmony, ib. 531 ;
at thirty must be initiated into
philosophy, ib. 537-539 ; at thirty-
five must enter on active life, ib,
539 E ; after fifty may return to
philosophy, ib. 540 ; when they
die, will be buried by the state
and paid divine honours, 3. 414
A; 5. 465 E, 469 A; 7- 54oB.
Cp. Guardians.
S.
Sacrifices, private, I. 328 B, 331 D ;
— in atonement, 2. 364 ; — human,
in Arcadia, 8. 565 D.
Sailors, necessary in the state, 2.
371 B.
Sarpedon, 3. 388 C.
Sauces, not mentioned in Homer,
3. 404 D.
Scamander, beleaguered by Achilles,
3- 391 B.
Scepticism, danger of, 7. 538, 539.
Science (en-ior^/ii;), a division of the
intellectual world, 7. 533 E (cp.
6. 511) ; — the sciences distin-
guished by their object, 4. 438
[cp. Charm. 171] ; not to be
studied with a view to utility
only, 7. 527 A, 529, 530; their
unity, ib. 531 ; use hypotheses,
ib. 533 ; correlation of, ib. 537.
Sculpture, must only express the
image of the good, 3. 401 B ;
painting of, 4. 420 D [cp. Laws 2.
668 E].
Scylla, 9. 588 C.
Scythian, Anacharsis the, 10. 600 A ;
— Scythians, the, characterized
by spirit or passion, 4. 435 E.
Self-indulgence in men and states,
4. 425 E, 426 ; — self-interest the
natural guide of men, 2. 359 B ;
— self-made men bad company,
i. 33° C ;— self-mastery, 4. 430,
431'
Bb
Index.
Sense, objects of, twofold, 7. 523;
knowledge given by, imperfect,
ibid. ; 10. 602 ; sense and intel-
lect, 7. 524 : — Senses, the, classed
among faculties, 5. 477 C.
Seriphian, story of Themistocles
and the, I. 329 E.
Servants, old family, 8. 549 E.
Sex in the world below, 10. 618 B ;
— sexes to follow the same train-
ing, 5. 451, 466 [cp. Laws 7. 805] ;
equality of, advantageous, id. 456,
457 ; relation between, ib. 458
foil. [cp. Laws 8. 835 E] ; freedom
of intercourse between, in a de-
mocracy, 8. 563 B. Cp. Women.
Sexual desires, 5. 458 E \cp. Laws
6. 783 A; 8.835E].
Shadows, 6. 510 A ; — knowledge of
shadows («Vao-ia), one of the
faculties of the soul, 6. 51 1 E ; 7.
533 E.
Shepherd, the analogy of, with the
ruler, I. 343, 345 [cp. Pol. 275].
Shopkeepers, necessary in the state,
2. 371 [cp. Laws ii. 918].
Short sight, 2. 368 D.
Sicily, 'can tell of Charondas,' 10.
599 E ;— Sicilian cookery, 3. 404
D.
Sight, placed in the class of faculties,
5. 477 C ; requires in addition to
vision and colour, a third element,
light, 6. 507 ; the most wonderful
of the senses, ibid. ; compared to
mind,/£. 508 ; 7. 532 A ; illusions
of, 7. 523 ; 10. 602, 603 D : — the
world of sight, 7. 517.
Sign, the, of Socrates, 6. 496 C.
Silver, mingled by the God in the
auxiliaries, 3. 415 A (cp. 416 E ; 8.
547 A) ; — [and gold] not allowed
to the guardians, 3. 416 E ; 4. 419,
422 D ; 5. 464 D (cp. 8. 543).
Simonides, his definition of justice
discussed, I. 331 D-335 E ; a
sage,#. 335 E.
Simplicity, the first principle of
education, 3. 397 foil., 400 E, 404 ;
the two kinds of, ib. 400 E ; of
the good man, ib. 409 A ; in diet,
8. 559 C (cp. 3.4040).
Sin, punishment of, 2. 363; 10.
614 foil. Cp. Hades, World
below.
Sirens, harmony of the, 10. 617 B.
Skilled person, the, cannot err
(Thrasymachus), I. 340 D.
Slavery, more to »be feared than
death, 3. 387 A ; of Hellenes con-
demned, 5. 469 B.
Slaves, the uneducated man harsh
towards, 8. 549 A; enjoy great
freedom in a democracy, ib. 563
B ; always inclined to rise against
their masters, 9. 578 \cp. Laws 6.
776, 777]-
Smallness and greatness, 4. 438 B ;
5. 479 B ; 7. 523, 524 ; 9. 575 C ;
10. 602 D, 605 C.
Smell, pleasures of, 9. 584 B.
Snake-charming, I. 358 B.
Socrates, goes down to the Peiraeus
to see the feast of Bendis, 1. 327 ;
detained by Polemarchus and
Glaucon, ibid. ; converses with
Cephalus, ib. 328-332 ; trembles
before Thrasymachus, ib. 336 D ;
his irony, ib. 337 A ; his poverty,
ib. D ; a sharper in argument, ib.
340 D ; ignorant of what justice
is, ib. 354 C ; his powers of fasci-
nation, 2. 358 A ; requested by
Glaucon and Adeimantus to
praise justice per se, ib. 367 B ;
cannot refuse to help justice,
ib. 368 C ; 4. 427 D ; his oath
'by the dog/ 3. 399 E; 8. 567
E ; 9. 592 A ; hoped to have
evaded discussing the subject of
women and children, 5. 449, 472,
473 (CP' 6. 502 E) ; his love of
truth, 5. 45 1 A ; 6. 504 ; his power
in argument, 6. 487 B ; not un-
accustomed to speak in parables,
ib. E ; his sign, ib. 496 C ; his
earnestness in behalf of philo-
sophy, 7. 536 B ; his reverence
for Homer, 10. 595 C, 607 (cp.
3- 39i A).
Index.
371
Soldiers, must form a separate class,
2. 374 ; the diet suited for, 3. 404 D
(cp.Guardians) ; — women to be sol-
diers, 5.452, 466, 471 E ; — punish-
ment of soldiers for cowardice, ib.
468 A. Cp. Warrior.
Solon, famous at Athens, 10. 599 E ;
—quoted, 7. 536 D.
Son, the supposititious, parable of,
7- 537 E.
Song, parts of, 3.398 D.
Sophists, the, their view of justice,
1. 338 foil. ; verbal quibbles of, ib.
340 ; the public the great Sophist,
6. 492 ; the Sophists compared to
feeders of a beast, ib. 493.
Sophocles, a remark of, quoted, I.
329B.
Sorrow, not to be indulged, 3. 387 ;
10.603-606; has a relaxing effect
on the soul, 4. 430 A ; 10. 606.
Soul, the, has ends and excellences,
*• 353 D 5 beauty in the soul, 3.
401 ; the fair soul in the fair body,
ib. 402 D ; sympathy of soul and
body, 5. 462 D, 464 B ; conversion
of the soul from darkness to light,
7. 518, 521, 525 [cp. Laws 12.
957 E] ; requires the aid of cal-
culation and intelligence in order
to interpret the intimations of
sense, ib. 523, 524; 10. 602 ; has
more truth and essence than the
body, 9. 585 D ; — better and worse
principles in the soul, 4. 431 ; the
soul divided into reason, spirit,
appetite, #. 435-442; 6. 504 A;
8. 550 A; 9. 571, 580 E, 581 [cp.
Tim.69E-72, 89 E ; Laws 9. 863] ;
faculties of the soul, 6. 511 E; 7.
533 E ; oppositions in the soul,
10. 603 D [cp. Soph. 228 A ; Laws
10.896 D] ; — thelame soul, 3. 401 ;
7- 535 [cp. Tim. 44; Soph. 228] ;
— the soul marred by meanness,
6. 495 E [cp. Gorg. 524 E] ; —im-
mortality of the soul, 10. 608 foil,
(cp. 6. 498 C) ; — number of souls
does not increase, 10. 6nA; —
the soul after death, ib. 614 foil.; —
transmigration of souls, tb.6i 7 [cp.
Phaedr. 249 ; Tim. 90 E foil.] ;—
the soul impure and disfigured
while in the body, ib. 611 [cp.
Phaedo 81] ; — compared to a
many-headed monster, 9. 588 ;
to the images of the sea-god
Glaucus, 10. 611; — like the eye,
6. 508; 7. 518;— harmony of the
soul, produced by temperance, 4.
430, 442, 443 (cp. 9. 591 D, and
Laws 2. 653 B) ; — eye of the soul,
7. 518 D, 527 E, 5330,540 A;—
five forms of the state and soul,
4. 445 5 5- 449 J 9- 577-
Soul. [The psychology of the Re-
public^ while agreeing generally
with that of the other Dialogues,
is in some respects a modifica-
tion or developement of their con-
clusions.— The division of the
soul into three elements, reason,
spirit, appetite, here first assumes
a precise form, and henceforward
has a permanent place in the lan-
guage of philosophy (cp. Introd.
p. Ixvii). On this division the dis-
tinction between forms of govern-
ment is based (see s. v. Govern-
ment). Virtue, again, is the
harmony or accord of the different
elements, when the dictates of
reason are enforced by passion
against the appetites, while vice
is the anarchy or discord of the
soul when passion and appetite
join in rebellion against reason
(V/. 4. 444; 10.609 foil. ; Soph.
228 ; Pol. 296 D ; Laws 10. 906
C]. — Regarded from the intel-
lectual side the soul is analysed
into four faculties, reason, under-
standing, faith, knowledge of
shadows. These severally cor-
respond to the four divisions of
knowledge (6. 511 E), two for in-
tellect and two for opinion ; and
thus arises the Platonic 'pro-
portion]— being : becoming : : in-
tellect : opinion, and science : bc-
ba
372
Index.
lief: : understanding', knowledge
of shadows. These divisions are
partly real, partly formed by
a logical process, which, as in
so many distinctions of ancient
philosophers, has outrun fact,
and are further illustrated and
explained by the allegory of the
cave in Book VII (see Introduc-
tion, p. xciv). — The pre-existence
and the immortality of the soul
are assumed. The doctrine of
avdnvrja-is or ' remembrance of a
previous 'birth ' is not so much
dwelt ttpon as in the Meno,
Phaedo, or Phaedrus, neither is
it made a proof of immortality
(Meno 86; Phaedo 73). // is
apparently alluded to in the story
of Er, where we are told that
1 the pilgrims drank the waters
of Unmindfulness ; the foolish
took too deep a draught, but the
wise were more moderate' (jo.
62 1 A) . In the Xth Book Glaucon
is supposed to receive with amaze-
ment Socrates1 confident assertion
of immortality, although a pre-
vious alhision to another state of
existence has passed unheeded (6.
498 D) ; and in earlier parts of
the discussion (e.g. 2. 362 ; 3.
386), the censure which is passed
on the common representations of
Hades implies in itself some belief
in a future life [cp. Introduction
to Phaedo, Vol. I]. The argii-
ment for the immortality of the
soul is not drawn out at great
length or with the emphasis of
the Phaedo. It is chiefiy of a
verbal character: — All things
which perish are destroyed by
some inherent evil j bitt the soul
is not destroyed by sin, which is
the evil proper to her, and must
therefore be immortal (cp. Introd.
p. clxvi). — The condition of the
soul after death is represented by
Plato in his favourite form of a
myth [cp. Meno 81 ; Phaedo 88 ;
Gorg. 522]. The Pamphylian
warrior Er, who is supposed
to have died in battle, revives
when placed on the funeral pyre
and relates his experiences .in
the other world. He tells how,
the just are rewarded and the
wicked punished, and is privi^
leged to describe the spectacle
which he had witnessed of the
choice of a new life by the pilgrim
souls. The reward of release
from bodily existence is not held
out to the philosopher (Phaedo
1 14 C), but his wisdom, which has
a deeper root than habit (10. 619),
preserves him from overhaste in
his choice and ensures him a
happy destiny. — The transmigra-
tion of souls is represented in
the myth much as in the Phaedrus
and Timaeus. Plato in all likeli-
hood derived the doctrine from
an Oriental source, but through
Pythagorean channels. It pro-
bably had a real hold on his mind,
as it agreed, or could be made to
agree, with the conviction, which
he elsewhere expresses, of the re-
medial nature of punishment [cp.
Protag. 323 ; Gorg. 523-525].
Sounds in music, 7. 531 A.
Sparta. See Lacedaemon.
Spectator, the, unconsciously in-
fluenced by what he sees and
hears, 10. 605, 606 [cp. Laws 2.
656 A, 659 C] ; — the philosopher
the spectator of all time and all
existence, 6. 486 A [cp. Theaet.
173 E]. '
Spendthrifts, in Greek states, 8.
564.
Spercheius, the river-god, 3. 391 B.
Spirit, must be combined with gen-
tleness in the guardians, 2. 375 ;
3. 410 ; 6. 503 [cp. Laws 5. 731 BJ ;
characteristic of northern nations,
4. 435 E ; found in quite young
children, ib. 441 A [cp. Laws; 12.
Index.
373
963] :• — the spirited (or passion-
ate) element in the soul, ib. 440
foil. ; 6. 504 A ; 8. 550 A ; 9. 572 A,
580 E ; must be subject to the
( rational part, 4. 441 E [cp. Tim.
30 C, 70, 89 D] ; predominant in
the timocratic state and man, 8.
548, 550 B; characterised by am-
bition, 9. 581 B ; its pleasures,
ib. 586 D ; the favourite object
of the poet's imitation, 10. 604,
605.
Stars, motion of the, 7. 529, 530;
10. 616 E.
State, relation of, to the individual,
2. 368 ; 4. 434, 441 ; 5. 462 ; 8.
544 ; 9- 577 B [cp. Laws 3. 689 ;
5-739; 9.875, 877 C; 11.923];
origin of, 2. 369 foil. [cp. Laws
3. 678 foil.] ; should be in unity,
4. 422 ; 5. 463 [cp. Laws 5. 739] ;
place of the virtues in, 4. 428 foil. ;
virtue of state and individual, ib.
441 ; 6. 498 E ; family life in, 5.
449 [cp. Laws 5. 740] : — the luxu-
rious state, 2. 372 D foil. :— [the
best state] ; classes must be kept
distinct, ib. 374 ; 3. 379 E, 415 A ;
4. 421, 433 A, 434, 441 E, 443 ;
5. 453 (cp. 8. 552 A, and Laws 8.
846 E) ; the rulers must be philo-
sophers, 2. 376 ; 5. 473 ; 6. 484,
497 foil., 501, 503 B ; 7. 520, 521,
525 B, 540 ; 8. 543 (cp. Rulers) ;
the government must have the
monopoly of lying, 2. 382 ; 3. 389
A, 414 C ; 5. 459 D [cp. Laws 2.
663 E] ; the poets to be banished,
3. 398 A; 8. 568 B; 10. 595 foil.,
605 A, 607 A [cp. Laws 7.817];
the older must bear rule, the
younger obey, 3. 412 [cp. Laws
3. 690 A ; 4. 714 E] ; women,
children, and goods to be com-
mon, id. 416 ; 5. 450 E, 457 foil.,
462, 464 ; 8. 543 A [cp. Laws 5.
739 ; 7. 807 B] ; must be happy
as a whole, 4. 420 D ; 5. 466 A ;
7. 519 E ; will easily master other
states in war, 4. 422 ; must be of
a size which is not inconsistent
with unity, ib. 423 [cp. Laws 5.
737] 5 composed of three classes,
traders, auxiliaries, counsellors,
ib. 441 A ; may be either a mon-
archy or an aristocracy, ib. 445 C
(cp. 9. 576 D) ; will form one
family, 5. 463 [cp. Pol. 259] ; will
be free from quarrels and law-
suits, 2. 378 ; 5. 464, 465 ;— is it
possible? 5-47^473; 6.499; 7-
540 [cp. 7. 520 and Laws 4. 71 1 E ;
5. 739] ; framed after the heavenly
pattern, 6. 500 E ; .7. 540 A; 9.
592 ; how to be commenced, 6.
501 ; 7. 540; manner of its decline,
8. 546 [cp. Crit. 120] ; — the best
state that in which the rulers
least desire office, 7. 520, 521 :—
the four imperfect forms of states,
4. 445 B ; 8. 544 [cp. Pol. 291 foil.,
391 foil.] ; succession of states, 8.
545 foil. (cp. Government, forms
of) :— existing states not one but
many, 4. 423 A ; nearly all cor-
rupt, 6. 496; 7- 5I9> 52o; 9-
592.
State. [The polity of which Plato
* sketches the outline ' in the Re-
public may be analysed into two
principal elements, I, an Hellenic
state of the older or Spartan type,
with some traits borrowed from
Athens, II, an ideal city in which
the citizens have all things in
common, and the government is
carried on by a class of philo-
sopher rulers who are selected by
merit. These two elements are not
perfectly combined j and, as Aris-
totle complains (Pol. ii. 5,'§ 18),
very much is left ill-defined and
uncertain. — I. Like Hellenic cities
in general, the number of the
citizens is not to be great. The
size of the state is limited by the
requirement that * // shall not be
larger or smaller than is con-
sistent with unity? [The 'con-
venient number* 5040, which is
374
Index.
suggested in the Laws (v. 737), is
regarded by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 6,
§ 6) as an * enormous multitude!]
Again, the individual is subor-
dinate to the state. When Adei-
mantus complains of the hard life
which the citizens will lead, ' like
mercenaries in a garrison* (4.
419), he is answered by Socrates
that if the happiness of the whole
is secured, the happiness of the
parts will inevitably 'follow. Once
more, war is supposed to be the
normal condition of the state, and
military service is imposed upon
all. The profession of arms is
the only one in which the citizen
may properly engage. Trade is
regarded as dishonourable : —
* those who are good for nothing
else sit in the Agora buying and
selling* (2. 371 D) ; the warrior
can spare no time for such an
employment (ib. 374 C). \In the
Laws Plato's ideas enlarge; he
thinks that peace is to be preferred
to war ( i . 628) ; and he speculates
on the possibility of redeeming
trade from reproach by compelling
some of the best citizens to open a
shop or keep a tavern (n. 918).]
, — In these respects, as well as in
the introduction of common meals,
Plato was probably influenced by
the traditional ideal of Sparta
\cp. Introd. p. clxx]. The Athe-
nian element appears in the intel-
lectual training of the citizens,
and generally in the atmosphere of
grace and refinement which they
are to breathe (see s. v. Art). The
restless energy of the Athenian
, character is perhaps reflected in
the discipline imposed upon the
riding class (7. 540), who when
they have reached fifty are dis-
pensed from continuous public
service, but must then devote
themselves to abstract study, and
also be willing to take their turn
when necessary at the helm of
state \cp. Laws 7. 807 ; Thucyd. i.
70; ii, 40], — II. The most peculiar
features of Plato's state are (i)
the community of property, (2)
the position of women, (3) the
government of philosophers, (i)
The first (see s. v.}, though sug-
gested in some measure by the
example of Sparta or Crete \cp.
Arist. Pol. ii. 5, § 6], is not known
to have been actually practised
anywhere in Hellas, unless possibly
among such a body as the Pytha-
gorean brotherhood. (2) Nothing
in all the Republic was probably
stranger to his contemporaries
than the place which Plato as-
signs to women in the state. The
community of wives and children,
though carefully guarded by him
from the charge of licentiousness
(5. 458 E), would appear worse
in Athenian eyes than the tra-
ditional i licence* of the Spartan
women [Arist. Pol. ii. 9, § 5),
which, so far as it really existed,
no doubt arose out of an excessive
regard to physical considerations
in marriage. Again, the equal
share in education, in war, and in
administration which the women
are supposed to enjoy in Plato's
state, was, if not so revolting,
quite as contrary to common
Hellenic sentiment \cp. Thucyd.
ii. 45]. The Spartan women
exercised a great influence on
public affairs, but this was mainly
indirect \cp. Laws 7. 806 ; Arist.
Pol. ii. 9, § 8] ; they did not hold
office or learn the use of arms.
At Athens, as is well known, the
women, of the upper classes at
least, lived in an almost Oriental
seclusion, and were wholly ab-
sorbed in household duties (Laws
7/805 E ) . (3) Finally, the govern-
ment of philosophers had no ,an.a-
logy in the Hellenic world of
Index.
375
Plato's time. He may have taken
the suggestion from the stories of
the Pythagorean rule in Magna
Grcecia. But it is also possible
that these accounts of the br other-
hood of Pythagoras , some of which
have reached us on "very doubt-
ful authority, may be them-
selves to a considerable extent
coloured and distorted by fea-
tures adapted from the Republic.
Whether this is the case or not,
we can hardly doubt that Plato
was chiefly indebted to his own
imagination for his kingdom of
philosophers, or that it remained
to himself an ideal, rather
than a state which would ever
lplay her part in actual life'
(Tim. 1 9, 20). // is at least signi-
ficant that he never finished the
Critias, as though he were unable
to embody, even in a mythical
form, the 'city of which the pattern
is laid up in heaven?}
Statesmen in their own imagination,
4. 426.
Statues, polished for a decision, 2.
361 D ; painted, 4. 420 D.
Steadiness of character, apt to be
accompanied by stupidity, 6. 503
[cp. Theaet. I44B].
Stesichorus, says that Helen was
never at Troy, 9. 586 C.
Stories, improper, not to be told
to children, 2. 377 ; 3. 391. Cp.
Children, Education.
Strength, rule of, I. 338.
Style of poetry, 3. 392 ;— styles,
various, ib. 397.
Styx, 3. 387 B.
Suits, will be unknown in the best
state, 5. 464 E.
Sumptuary laws, 4. 423, 425.
Sun, the, compared with the idea of
good, 6. 508 ; not sight, but the
author of sight, ib. 509 ;— 'the
sun of Heracleitus,' ib. 498 A.
Supposititious son, parable of .the*
' 7.538.
Sympathy, of soul and body, 5.
462 D, 464 B ; aroused by poetry,
10. 605 B.
Syracusan dinners, 3. 404 D.
T.
Tactics, use of arithmetic in, 7. 522 E,
525 B.
Tartarus (= hell), 10. 6i6A.
Taste> good, importance of, 3. 401,
402.
Taxes, heavy, imposed by the tyrant,
8. 567 A, 568 E.
Teiresias, alone has understanding
among the dead, 3. 386 E.
Telamon, 10. 620 B.
Temperance (o-ox^poo-wj?), in the
state, 3. 389 ; 4. 430 foil. [cp. Laws
3. 696] ; temperance and love, 3.
403 A ; fostered in the soul by
the simple kind of music, ib. 404
E, 410 A ; a harmony of the soul,
4. 430, 441 E, 442 D, 443 (cp. 9.
591 D, and Laws 2. 653 B) ; one
of the philosopher's virtues, 6.
485 E, 490 E, 491 B, 494 B [cp.
Phaedo 68].
Temple-robbing, 9. 574 D, 575 B.
Territory, devastation of Hellenic,
not to be allowed, 5. 470 ; — un-
limited, not required by the
good state, 4. 423 [cp. Laws
5- 737]-
Thales, inventions of, 10. 600 A.
Thamyras, soul of, chooses the life
of a nightingale, 10. 620 A.
Theages, the bridle of, 6. 496 B.
Themis, did not instigate the strife
with the gods, 2. 379 E.
Themistocles, answer of, to the
Seriphian, I. 330 A.
Theology of Plato, 2. 379 foil. Cp.
God. y;
Thersites, puts on the form of a
monkey, 10. 620 C.
Theseus, the tale of, and Peirithous
not permitted, 3. 391 C.
Thetis, not jto be slandered, 2.381 $5
376
Index.
her accusation of Apollo, ib.
383 A. :
Thirst, 4. 437 E, 439 ; an inanition
(iMMHrtt) of the body, 9. 585 A.
Thracians, procession of, in honour
of Bendis, 1. 327 A ; characterised
by spirit or passion, 4. 435 E.
Thrasymachus, the Chalcedonian,
a person in the dialogue, 1. 328 B ;
described, ib. 336 B ; will be paid,
ib. 337 D ; defines justice, ib. 338
C foil. ; his rudeness, ib. 343 A ;
his views of government, ibid. (cp.
9. 590 D) ; his encomium on in-
justice, I. 343 A; his manner of
speech, ib. 345 B ; his paradox
about justice and injustice, ib.
348 B foil. ; he blushes, ib. 350 D ;
is pacified, and retires from the
argument, ib. 354 (cp. 6. 498 C) ;
would have Socrates discuss the
subject of women and children,
5- 450.
Timocracy, 8. 545 foil.; origin of,
ib. 547 : — the timocratical man,
described, 8. 549; his origin,
ibid.
Tinker, the prosperous, 6. 495, 496.
Tops, 4. 436.
Torch race, an equestrian, I. 328 A.
Touch, 7. 523 E.
Traders, necessary in the state, 2.
371-
Traditions of ancient times, their
truth not certainly known to us,
2. 382 C (cp. 3. 414 C, and Tim.
40 D; Crit. 107; Pol. 271 A;
Laws 4. 713 E ; 6. 782 D).
Tragedy and comedy in the state,
3. 394 [cp. Laws 7. 817].
Tragic poets, the, eulogizers of
tyranny, 8. 568 A ; imitators, 10.
597, 598.
Training, dangers of, 3. 404 A ;
severity of, 6. 504 A (cp. 7. 535 B).
Transfer of children from one class
to another, 3. 415 ; 4. 423 D.
Transmigration of souls, 10. 617.
See Soul.
Trochaic rhythms, 3. 400 B.
Troy, 3- 393 E 5 Helen never at, 9.
586 C:— Trojan War, 2. 380 A:
treatment of the wounded in, 3.
405 E, 408 A ; the army num-
bered by Palamedes, 7. 522 D.
Truth, is not lost by men of their
own will, 3. 413 A ; the aim of
the philosopher, 6. 484, 485,
486 E, 490, 500 C, 501 D ; 7. 521,
537 D ; 9. 581, 582 C (cp. supra
5.475 E ; 7. 520, 525 ; aw^Phaedo
82; Phaedr.249; Theaet. I73E;
Soph. 249 D, 254 A) ; akin to
wisdom, 6. 485 D ; to proportion,
ib. 486 E ; no partial measure of,
sufficient, ib. 504 ; love of, essen-
tial in this world and the next,
10. 618 ; — truth and essence, 9.
585 D.
Tyranny, I. 338 D ; — injustice on
the grand scale, ib. 344 [cp. Gorg.
469] ; the wretchedest form of
government, 8. 544 C ; 9. 576
[cp. Pol. 302 E] ; origin of, 8. 562,
564 : — the tyrannical man, 9. 571
foil. ; life of, ib. 573 ; his treatment
of his parents, ib. 574 ; most
miserable, ib. 576, 578 ; has the
soul of a slave, ib. 577.
Tyrant, the, origin of, 8. 565 ; hap-
piness of, ib. 566 foil. ; 9« 576 foil.
[cp. Laws 2. 66 1 B] ; his rise to
power, 8. 566; his taxes, ib. 567 A,
568 E ; his army, ib. 567 A, 569 ;
his purgation of the city, ib. 567 B ;
misery of, 9. 579 ; has no real
pleasure, ib. 587 ; how far dis-
tant from pleasure, ibid. : — Ty-
rants and poets, 8. 568 ; have no
friends, ibid. ; 9. 576 [cp. Gorg.
5ioC]; punishment of, in the
world below, 10. 615 [cp. Gorg.
525].
U.
Understanding, a faculty of the
soul, 6. 5 1 1 D ; - science, 7. 533 E.
Union impossible among the bad,
I. 352 A [cp. Lysis 214].
Index.
377
Unity of the state, 4. 422, 423 ; 5.
462, 463 [cp. Laws 5. 739] ;— ab-
solute unity, 7. 524 E, 525 E ;
unity and plurality, ibid.
Unjust man, the, happy (Thrasy-
machus), I. 343, 344 [cp. Gorg.
470 foil.]; his unhappiness finally
proved, 9. 580; 10. 613 : —injus-
tice = private profit, i. 344 (see
Injustice).
Uranus, immoral stories about, 2.
377 E.
User, the, a better judge than the
maker, 10. 601 C [cp. Crat. 390].
Usury, sometimes not protected
by law, 8. 556 A [cp. Laws 5.
742 C].
V.
Valetudinarianism, 3.406; 4. 426 A.
Valour, prizes of, 5. 468.
Vice, the disease of the soul, 4. 444 ;
10. 609 foil. [cp. Soph. 228 ; Pol.
296 D ; Laws 10. 906 C] ; is many,
4. 445 ; the proper object of
ridicule, 5. 452 E ;— fine names
for the vices, 8. 560 E. Cp. In-
justice.
Virtue and justice, I. 350 [cp. Meno
73 E, 79] ; thought by mankind
to be toilsome, 2. 364 A [cp. Laws
807 D] ; virtue and harmony, 3.
401 A (cp. 7. 522 A) ; virtue and
pleasure, 3. 402 E (cp. Pleasure) ;
not promoted by excessive care
of the body, ib. 407 (cp. 9. 591 D) ;
makes men wise, 3. 409 E ; di-
vided into parts, 4. 428 foil., 433 ;
in the individual and the state,
ib. 435 foil., 441 (cp. Justice) ; the
health of the soul, ib, 444 (cp. 10.
609 foil., and Soph. 228 ; Pol.
296 D) ; is one, ib. 445 ; may be
a matter of habit, 7. 518 E; 10.
619 D ; impeded by wealth, 8.
550 E [cp. Laws 5. 728 A, 742 ;
8. 831, 836 A] ;— virtues of the
philosopher, 6. 485 foil., 490 D,
491 B, 494 B (cp. Philosopher) ;
place of the several virtues in the
state, 4. 427 foil.
Visible world, divisions of, 6. 510
foil.; 7. 517; compared to the
intellectual, 6. 508, 509 ; 7. 532 A.
Vision, 5. 477 ; 6. 508 ; 7. 517. See
Sight.
W.
War, causes of, 2. 373 ; 4. 422 foil. ;
8. 547 A ; an art, 2. 374 A (cp. 4.
422, and Laws II. 921 E) ; men,
women, and children to go to, 5.
452 foil., 467, 471 E ; 7. 537 A ;
regulations concerning, 5. 467-
471 ; a matter of chance, ib. 467 E
\cp. Laws i. 638 A] ; distinction
between internal and external,
ib. 470 A [cp. Laws I. 628, 629] ;
the guilt of, always confined to a
few persons, ib. 471 B ; love of,
especially characteristic of timo-
cracy, 8. 547 E ; cannot be easily
waged by an oligarchy, ib. 551 E ;
the rich and the poor in war, ib.
556 C ; a favourite resource of the
tyrant, ib. 567 A.
Warrior, the brave, rewards of, 5.
468 ; his burial, ib. E ; the
warrior must know how to count,
7. 522 E, 525 ; must be a geo-
metrician, ib. 526.
Waves, the three, 5. 457 C, 472 A,
473 C..
Weak, the, by nature subject to the
strong, I. 338 [cp. Gorg. 489;
Laws 3. 690 B] ; not capable of
much, either for good or evil, 6.
491 E, 495 B.
Wealth, the advantage of, in old
age, i. 329, 330; the greatest
blessing of, ib. 330, 331 ; the
destruction of the arts, 4. 421 ;
influence of, on the state, ib.
422 A [cp. Laws 4. 705 5 5- 729
A] ; the ' sinews of war/ ibid. ;
all-powerful in oligarchies and
timocracies, 8. 548 A, 551 B, 553,
562 A ; an impediment to virtue,
378
Index.
ib. 550 E [cp. Laws 5. 728 A ;
742 E; 8. 831, 836 A]; should
only be acquired to a moderate
amount, 9. 591 E [cp. Laws 7.
801 B] :— the blind god of wealth
(Pluto), 8. 554 B :— Wealthy, the,
everywhere hostile to the poor,
4. 423 A ; 8. 551 E [cp. Laws 5.
736 A] ; flattered by them, 5.
465 C ; the wealthy and the
wise, 6. 489 B ; plundered by
the multitude in democracies, 8.
564, 565.
Weaving, the art of, 3. 401 A ; 5.
455 D.
Weep, the guardians not to, 3. 387 C
(cp. 10. 603 E).
Weighing, art of, corrects the il-
lusions of sight, 10. 602 D.
Whole, the, in regard to the happi-
ness of the state, 4. 420 D; 5.
466 A ; 7. 519 E ; in love, 5. 474
C, 475 B ; 6. 485 B.
WThorl, the great, 10. 616.
Wicked, the, punishment of, in the
world below, 2. 363; 10. 614;
thought by men to be happy, i.
354 ; 2. 364 A ; 3. 3926 (cp. 8.
545 A, and Gorg. 470 foil. ; Laws
2. 66 1 ; 10. 899 E, 905 A).
Wine, lovers of, 5. 475 A.
Wisdom (<ro<£>ia, <frpovrj<ris) and in-
justice, I. 349, 350 ; in the state,
4. 428 ; akin to truth, 6. 485 D ;
the power of, 7. 518, 519; the
only virtue which is innate in us,
ib. 518 E.
Wise man, the, = the good, I. 350
[cp. I Alcib. 124, 125] ; definition
of, 4. 442 C ; alone has true plea-
sure,^. 583 B ; life of, ib. 591 ; —
' the wise to go to the doors of the
rich,' 6. 489 B ; — wise men said to
be the friends of the tyrant, 8.
568.
Wives to be common in the state,
5. 457 foil. ; 8. 543.
Wolves, men changed into, 8. 565
D ; * wolf and flock ' (proverb), 3.
4I5D.
Women, employments of, 5. 455 •
differences of taste in, ib. 456 ;
fond of complaining, 8. 549 D ;
supposed to differ in nature from
men, 5. 453 ; inferior to men, ib.
455 [cp> Tim- 42; Laws 6. 781] ;
ought to be trained like men, ib.
451, 466 [cp. Laws 7. 805 ; 8. 829
E] ; in the gymnasia, ib. 452, 457
[cp. Laws 7. 813, 814; 8. 833];
in war, ib. 453 foil., 466 E, 471 E
[cp. Laws 6. 785 ; 7. 806, 814 A] ;
to be guardians, ib. 456, 458, 468 ;
7. 540 C ; (and children) to be
common, 5. 450 E, 457 foil., 462,
464; 8. 543 [cp. Laws 5. 739].
See supra s. v. State, p. 374.
World, the, cannot be a philosopher,
6. 494 A.
World below, the, seems very near
to the aged, I. 330 E ; not to be
reviled, 3. 386 foil. [cp. Crat.
403 ; Laws 5. 727 E ; 8. 828 D] ;
pleasure of discourse in, 6. 498 D
[cp. Apol. 41] ; punishment of
the wicked in, 2. 363 ; 10. 614
foil. ; sex in, 10. 618 B ; — [heroes]
who have ascended from the world
below to the gods, 7. 521 C.
Xerxes, perhaps author of the maxim
that justice — paying one's debts,
I. 336 A.
Y.
Young, the, how affected by the
common praises of injustice, 2.
365 ; cannot understand allegory,
ib. 378 E ; must be subject in the
state, 3. 412 B [cp. Laws 3. 690 A ;
4. 7I4E]; must submit to their
elders, 5. 465 A [cp. Laws 4. 721
D; 9. 879 C; II. 917 A]. Cp.
Children, Education.
Youth, the corruption of, not to be
attributed to the Sophists, but to
Index.
379
public opinion, 6. 492 A ; youth-
ful enthusiasm for metaphysics,
7. 539 B \fp. Phil. 15 E] ;— youth-
ful scepticism, not of long con-
tinuance, ib. D \cp. Soph. 234 E ;
Laws 10. 888 B].
Zeus, his treatment of his father, 2.
377 E ; throws Hephaestus from
heaven, ib. 378 D ; —Achilles de-
scended from, 3. 391 C ;— did not
cause the violation of the treaty
in the Trojan War, or the strife of
the gods, 2. 379 E ; or send the
lying dream to Agamemnon, ib.
383 A ; or lust for Here, 3. 390
B ; ought not to have been de-
scribed by Homer as lamenting
for Achilles and Sarpedon, ib. 388
C ;— Lycaean Zeus, 8. 565 D;—
Olympian Zeus, 9. 583 B.
THE END.
Ojcforb
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY1
Live Music
Archive
Librivox
Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland
Museum of Art
Internet
Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American
Libraries
TV News
Understanding
9/11